


Too Much

by acacia59



Series: Too/To/Two [1]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2017-12-22 11:37:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 76,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/912749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acacia59/pseuds/acacia59
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Brian, picking up the pieces of his life after Freddie’s death isn’t easy. For Roger, who has successfully hid his feelings for years, it may be even harder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Prologue**

**November, 1992**

_I have spent all my years in believing you, but I just can't get no relief, Lord!_

_Somebody, somebody, can anybody find me somebody to love?_

 

 

Roger licked a long line up Brian’s throat, barely able to stop from moaning as the other man’s scent enveloped him. His face was buried in the guitarist’s hair, his hands tangled in the loose shirt he was wearing. He hit a sensitive spot behind Brian’s ear and he heard his breath hitch a little. It was the first sound Brian had made yet and it was all Roger could do to stop himself from frantically rubbing himself against Brian’s leg as the gasp sent a tremor straight to his cock.

 

It seemed to Roger that Brian’s smell was as potent as any drug he had ever tried. He breathed deeply and the herbal, musky, uniquely Brian scent flooded his senses. He picked out mint and a touch of rosemary and something that reminded him of walking through a sun-soaked field, like freshly cut hay. _A sun-soaked field, what the hell is wrong with me?_ he snorted silently to himself. “You have no idea what you do to me,” he murmured into Brian’s ear, his voice low and rough with desire. He slid one hand beneath Brian’s shirt. His skin was smooth and slightly cool to the touch, Roger felt like he was burning with fever in comparison. Brian quivered under his hand and his mouth, which was now tracing the curve of his ear, painfully slowly. A low moan escaped the taller man and Roger was prepared to swear that it was the most exquisite sound he had ever heard.

 

He continued to run his hand up Brian’s chest, the friction building warmth between the two men. He needed more contact and quickly, he pushed his body too hard against Brian and the other man stumbled backward until he was pinned against the nearest wall. The straining bulge in Roger’s trousers made contact with Brian’s thigh and they both hissed. Brian’s hand jerked reflexively and then he hesitantly threaded his fingers into Roger’s hair. Roger wanted to rub against that hand and purr like one of the cats watching them from the piano bench across the room, but he contented himself with pressing Brian more firmly against the wall.

 

His questing fingertips grazed against Brian’s nipple under his shirt. Brian turned his face away and opened his mouth to silently pant as Roger teased the small nub of flesh into full erectness. With his other hand, he pushed some of the great cloud of hair from Brian’s face, admiring the line of his jaw, noticing the dark circles under his eyes and the lines around his mouth that never used to be there.

 

“Brian, you are fucking _devastating_ , do you know that?” he said, softly, watching Brian’s eyes flick briefly to meet his before skittering away. Brian didn’t respond, but involuntarily thrust against Roger’s hand.

 

Roger pushed Brian back and slid his hand down to grasp Brian’s hip and crush their pelvises tighter together. Brian’s bones were harsh feeling under his touch and he loosened his grip in shock at the other man’s fragility. Holding the full length of his body against Brian, he dimly became aware that no answering hardness was matching the push of his erection. A faint wave of nausea swept over him, but he gritted his teeth and pulled Brian’s head around to face him with a hand that only trembled slightly.

 

Brian gasped weakly at Roger’s force and Roger took the opportunity to capture the guitarist’s mouth with his own. Their eyes met for a breathless moment until Brian submissively lowered and then closed his.

 

Roger distractedly wished that he hadn’t had quite so many cigarettes before he came over. He carefully coaxed the other man’s lips further apart so that his tongue could delve deeper into Brian’s mouth. He tasted vaguely sweet and his mouth was as warm as the rest of his body wasn’t. Roger smoothed his hands along the sides of Brian’s face until his fingers were caught in the dense mat of hair. With a shudder, he resisted the temptation to yank that hair fiercely until he had crushed Brian into the kiss.

 

He pulled his tongue back, trying to cajole Brian into responding to the kiss. But Brian did not pursue the blond and Roger could feel a rigid tension in the taller man’s body. _He has reduced me to a quivering lump of jelly. How can he possibly remain so aloof…like a stone? Does he not…_ Roger couldn’t bear to finish the thought. He decided to stop thinking and instead fed his frustration into his actions, recklessly. He jammed their lips together, wrestling Brian’s unresponsive tongue into participation.

 

The taste and smell of the lanky guitarist, the feel of that slim body against his, was all quickly combining to wreck Roger’s inhibitions. He needed more than this and soon. His fingers curled in Brian’s hair and their teeth clashed in Roger’s abandon. At that moment, he felt a twitch against his groin as Brian’s cock began to unfurl.

 

It was incredible how Brian’s smallest response could make him completely fall to pieces. He was done with going carefully. He thrust his hand between the two of them and grabbed Brian roughly through his trousers. His knees nearly buckled as the reality of just how good Brian’s fledgling erection felt in his hand swept over him. Pressing the heel of his hand into Brian, he rubbed, firmly and slowly.

 

Brian arched against him. Roger was lost, the house could come tumbling down around his ears and he wouldn’t care at all in the aftermath of this moment’s perfection. He longed to be buried balls deep in the other man, Brian writhing and moaning beneath him, cock weeping _for him_ and only him _._

 

The writhing may be a distant fantasy, but as Roger stroked Brian more determinedly, he moaned quietly into Roger’s mouth. Quietly wasn’t really the adverb Roger was after, so he broke the kiss to concentrate fully on the taller man. Brian filled his lungs in a drawn out, hissing breath as he threw his head back. Roger watched the tendons jumping in his slender neck, mesmerized. He reached a trembling hand towards the button of Brian’s trousers.

 

Brian let his breath go in a great gasping sob. “I…can’t. God, Roger, I’m sorry, I can’t.” Roger slowly lowered his hand, feeling that if he moved too quickly, he would burst from pent up desire. A flash of anger surged through him, unbidden. He swallowed, concentrating on not curling his hands into fists. He looked up and, seeing Brian’s shattered expression, he was instantly taken by guilt.

 

“No worries, Brian,” he mumbled. “We don’t need to rush anything.” Brian inhaled, raggedly, and buried his face in his hands, pulling and turning away. Roger grabbed his shoulders and tried to turn him around again, but the taller man resisted.

 

“Don’t hide, please, Bri…” Roger heard a note of whining in his voice and winced.

 

Brian’s voice was hoarse and barely recognizable. “Roger, why do you still bother with me?”

 

Roger reeled back, trying to ignore the hurt that the other man had inflicted. “Bother with you? Do you really think this only a bother for me? I fucking love you, Brian. You can’t just wish that away. No matter how much it _bothers_ you,” Roger shook his head in disbelief, staring hard at the slender back in front of him, willing him to turn around, to understand. “You can’t get rid of me so easily, you know.”

 

The silence stretched between them. _He is so goddamned stubborn,_ Roger thought, _he thinks if he just stuffs his head in the sand, all this…shit will just disappear._ Roger set his jaw. He wasn’t going to let Brian win and push him away without a fight. He wished he was Freddie and could think of the right thing to say, something romantic and tinged with the perfect amount of humor, or even John and surprise Brian with something quietly philosophical and profound. _All I can manage is snarky. Or mean._

 

“Damn it all to hell, Brian, just look at me,” he said, more forcefully than he had intended.

 

Brian turned, moving like a man twice his age. His face was shockingly white against his black hair, making his eyes look like bottomless pits that drew Roger in and threatened to swallow him down. He straightened to his full height and his mouth worked as though practicing his words. He paused and then deliberately licked his lips and spoke, words that pierced Roger’s carefully constructed composure.

 

“I don’t know if I will ever be able to give you the things that you want,” his voice broke and he looked back at Roger, stricken.

 

Roger sucked in his breath and gaped at Brian. He suddenly felt as tired as Brian looked. _When was the last time I got a full night’s sleep? Days ago? Years?_ Brian had lowered his eyes and the sight of the top of his curly head somehow made Roger’s ire rise in chest again. He cleared his throat.

 

“I want to be able to go on tour without feeling like my fucking arm has been chopped off. I want this whole shitty year to not have happened. I want to be twenty-six years old, I want the night to be splendid, with a drum set and a stage and to feel like there isn’t a soul in the world that can stop me. I want to not have spent the last two decades in a haze of alcohol and rock star hedonism and to have been able to pause for half a second and notice what a goddamned amazing thing we had going. Bloody hell, what do I want?” Roger let his head fall back and he studied the ceiling. “I want to have stopped in the middle of one of our fights and told you that I think you are a fucking incredible guitarist. I want to feel like I am not constantly tearing my world down around my ears. I want Freddie to be back, alive and vibrant. Oh God, how I want Freddie back.” His voice went hoarse and he stuck a finger into Brian’s chest, trying not to notice his stomach twist at the feeling of how thin and bony it was. “So yes, Brian, I think we can agree that you are not going to be able to give me any of the things I want.”

 

Brian blinked. _What is going on in there, Brian? I can’t tell what you are thinking anymore. If I ever could. Do you see_ me _when you look at me? Or do you see that dark haired man from your memories staring up at you?_ He had no idea what his own face looked like, he hoped it was showing at least half of the turmoil he was feeling.

 

Brian lifted his hand and brushed it against the edge of Roger’s cheekbone. The touch sent shock waves through the drummer as Brian’s callused fingertips grazed the fine hairs on Roger’s skin and he was immediately hard again. _Shit, what am I? Fifteen again?_ He closed his eyes and focused on not wrestling Brian to the floor right then and there.

 

He heard Brian shift uncomfortably and drop his hand. “Please…can you go now? I need…” he trailed off.

 

“Yeah, Brian, I’ll leave. But I don’t think you have any idea what you need. You should stop thinking about Freddie for a minute and think about that,” he spat, his arousal diverted uncomfortably into slow burning resentment. He turned to go so he didn’t have to witness the look of bewildered hurt that was surely crossing Brian’s face. _I don’t give a fuck anymore._ His lips twisted into a grimace. _God, if that was even remotely true…_

 

As Roger left the house, he paused to lean against the wall on the porch, trying to will away his erection. _Hell, I am getting bloody tired of wanking._ He rubbed his temples tiredly. The beginnings of a headache were insistently creeping through the base of his skull and pulsing in the veins of his temples. Distantly, he heard the sounds of sobbing from within the house. He pursed his lips, wanting to be anywhere else.

 

Gradually, words began to be interspersed with the crying. Roger tried not to hear, he tried to tell himself to get up and just walk away. But he was rooted to the floor, masochistically straining to make out the mumbled words.

 

“I don’t know why…I don’t want this…I don’t…who I am…”

 

And then came a cry too loud to ignore.

 

“Freddie…I am so fucking sorry! Freddie, love, so sorry...”


	2. Chapter 2

_Roger grips the steering wheel of the car too tightly and tries to think of anything but the dark-haired man in the too large house all alone somewhere in the darkness behind him. You are a truly, utterly, massively fucking fool to fall for Brian May, he berates himself, pressing down on the accelerator angrily and wrenching the car into a higher gear. And an even bigger fool to act on it. You could have had anyone you want, you are a fucking rock star. You could drive this car into any petrol station right now and not be able to beat the admirers off with a stick._

_It’s ridiculous to want Brian. Just look at him. His nose is too big for his face. He’s too skinny. He insists on acting like his hair is a big deal when it is the same fucking hair as hundreds of other rockers…okay, maybe tens. He bores you silly practically every time he opens his mouth to drone on and on. He is completely conceited and yet pretends to be oh so modest…and when he smiles it is like the sun breaking through the clouds on a perfectly clear and crisp winter day…goddammit all to hell._

_Where the hell did all this shit even began? Roger tells himself that he has no idea and then he sighs and thunks his forehead down on the steering wheel briefly before looking back up at the road and swerving into his lane again. The problem is that he knows exactly where it all began._

 

 

**Late fall, 1971**

_I'm just the pieces of the man I used to be **.**_

_Too many bitter tears are raining down on me **.**_

_I'm far away from home and I've been facing this alone for much too long **.**_

_Oh, I feel like no-one ever told the truth to me._

_About growing up and what a struggle it would be._

I shivered as the rain misted down from the darkened sky, glinting in the sickly orange glow of the street lamps and working its way through my hair, past the collar of my coat and down the back of my neck. I wasn’t sure if there was worse weather in this world than a slow, icy London fall drizzle, but it certainly wasn’t putting me in a very good mood. Combined with a string of up past 4 o’clock nights and a raging hangover, I was far from my top condition and inclined to snap at the slightest provocation.

 

It was getting old, to be honest. Playing in lecture halls and pubs, to the same old faces, mostly friends with nothing better to do than to get drunk listening to a gig by their mate who is too stubborn or stupid to give up his university band. I leaned against the wall under a convenient overhang and rubbed my cracked and blistered hands together to warm them, wincing at the sting of the friction. It was doubly frustrating because I knew we had something special. With John, it was as if the last piece of the puzzle had snapped in place with a satisfying plunk. Freddie thought so too. And as for Brian…he was still trying to burn both ends of the candle, but I was damned if I had any idea which way he was going to jump when the time came and in the meanwhile he was running himself even more ragged than I felt. This has to stop, I thought. If something didn’t happen soon, I was going to go stir crazy.

 

I sighed and pushed my hands through my hair, which only made more frigid water trickle down my neck. I didn’t normally feel this way, perhaps it was the sleep deprivation, or watching all my old friends go on, grow up, get real jobs and have babies. The back door of the pub swung open, temporarily blinding me as the warm bright lights of the hall spilled out into the alley. I recognized John’s silhouette, his head jutting out in that peculiar way of his, as he came towards me. He bummed a light and then said shyly, “Is everything alright, Roger?” He squinted up at the drizzle that dripped from the eves of the building. “Only, it’s awfully cold to be out here and you look like you’re thinking about something.” His eyes met mine briefly and then slid away, looking nervous that he had overstepped his boundaries.

 

“Do you ever wonder why you do this, John?” I said, more directly than I had quite intended.

 

He looked surprised and then thoughtful. “Well, there are a lot worse hobbies, I suppose.”

 

I laughed, which felt surprisingly good. “Come on, then, let’s go inside and get changed. It must be nearly time.” We went back inside, John holding the door and me shaking the rain from my hair like a dog.

 

***

 

As usual, the music sucked me in and washed away all the anxiety. There was something about playing in a group, that unison created this euphoric, almost out of body experience that could buoy the most dejected and lost old reprobate. That high was a hard thing to give up and had probably kept me in a number of bands past their expiration date. Some night were especially good. This was one of those nights.

 

Brian looked up across the stage as the last notes of his solo floated through the small room. We were only a few feet away on the crowded excuse for a stage and, all of the sudden, our eyes locked. He had that fierce look that he gets sometimes, his eyebrows drawn together sharply and his lower lip bitten in concentration. I had seen this look many times before, sidelong while performing or from the front while practicing but it had never been directed straight at me and I felt my chest tighten. Some bizarre emotion welled up from the pit of my stomach and it was almost like fear. I wanted to look away from him, but I found that I couldn’t. The moment seemed crystallized and timeless. I faltered in my rhythm and dropped a drumstick.

 

The clatter broke the rapport and Brian wrenched his eyes away from mine and down to the fallen stick. Freddie whipped round at the sudden lack of half of the rhythm section with lips pursed. Face burning, I snatched up the drumstick and hurriedly tried to compose myself. My heart was beating faster than could be attributed to the embarrassment of the fuck up and I deliberately did not look at Brian for the rest of the set. I could feel his presence like a raging bonfire against the side of my face. _Pull yourself together,_ I told myself firmly. _It is only Brian. You have played with him countless times. Tonight isn’t any different._

 

I was a touch off kilter from then on, a half heartbeat behind the rest. I could tell that Freddie was frustrated and trying too hard. He cut the encore short.

 

As we got off the stage, I carefully avoided Brian, ducking behind a group of his university friends that had come up to chat. I saw John watching me, but I dodged him too and took off to the furthest corner of the room. I really did not need any questions about the show. I wasn’t even dealing well with my own questions, for chrisssake.

 

I found a booth and lit a cigarette. A waitress appeared in front of me with a beer and indicated a knot of people clustered around Freddie with a tilt of her head. A few of them looked vaguely familiar although most didn’t, probably old fans bringing friends around. An encouraging sign, I supposed.

 

Brian. Well, that one caught me like a freight train coming out of nowhere. I had always noticed the way his eyes would crinkle all the way along his lower eyelid when he smiled or the intensely focused way he would play an especially tricky guitar bit, but I had always thought that I noticed him out of friendship and a concern for our musical future. It was only when that drumstick fell lifelessly from my hand did I even begin to suspect that there was more to my regard.

 

I was so focused on the foam slowly dissipating from my stout and the thoughts whirling through my head that I did not notice someone approaching. I jumped slightly as Freddie slid into the booth next to me. Glancing over to where he had been standing, I saw his new friends and admirers slowly dispersing out of the pub or over to where a rousing game of darts had developed.

 

“You know, normally when people drink, they socialized, tell amusing stories, enjoy some general merriment,” Freddie said, nonchalantly. I took another pull of my cigarette and did not reply. I looked down at my pint, shifting uncomfortably and wishing Freddie had ever bothered to learn how to leave well enough alone.

 

“Or you know, grim silence can be fun too,” Freddie commented philosophically. He leaned back, humming a lilting melody under his breath and playing the waiting game. I was damned if I was going to give in and crack but the pressure of the silence was making tension build in the base of my head and causing my eyes to twitch. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer.

 

“I think I am attracted to someone,” I blurted out.

 

Freddie looked at me out of the side of his eyes, his lips pursed thoughtfully. When he spoke, his voice was light but without any of the teasing it previously held. “Roger, you haven’t exactly lacked for partners and yet none of them have driven you to pensive drinking in the gloomy corners of pubs.”

 

I sighed. I didn’t particularly want to discuss this with him, but then I couldn’t really think of anyone better to discuss it with. “A male sort of someone.”

 

“Ah,” Freddie replied, looking over at me with a wry smile barely touching his lips. “Well, if it is any comfort, I think that we have established your sexually is somewhat…flexible.”

 

I blushed hotly and looked away. “Fred!” I hissed reproachfully. “That is different and you know it.”

 

He laughed a little, the color high on his cheeks as well, and asked, “Anyone I know?”

 

I thought frantically, weighing my options and decided that it was too much for me to bear to see his knowing glances every time the three of us were in the same general vicinity. “No…I mean, I don’t think so anyway.”

 

“You should just talk to him. You never know, maybe it’s mutual.” This from someone who spends hours planning every detail of his encounters down his very shoelaces.

 

Snorting exasperatedly, I turned to him. “Freddie, he is as straight as a fucking arrow.”

 

“Well, then.” He quirked an eyebrow. “I guess your only option is to pine away from afar until another hot piece of ass catches your eye, dear.” He winked lewdly and I laughed, feeling strangely cheerful although nothing had really been settled. Talking to Freddie could be like that.

 

Freddie crossed and then uncrossed his legs, propping his chin on his fist. He met my eyes and raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps your confusion stems from unresolved tension.”

 

I looked at him steadily, “Just what are you suggesting, precisely?”

 

He shrugged. “Maybe you just need a good shag, darling.”

 

“And you are offering, I suppose.” He lifted his hands elegantly. I chuckled and glanced around the room. “Eh, why the hell not?”

 

As we left together, I pointedly did not look for Brian in the crowd. Following up on whatever he had made me feel would just be a terrible idea anyway. Freddie was one thing, he knew how to let things stay uncomplicated. I might not know where this band was going, but I did know that a relationship with another band member would not make anything easier.

 

We made our way silently to my flat. We never discussed this, but Freddie was living with Mary now and while I didn’t pretend to understand their relationship, I knew enough not to ask and to head automatically to mine. Freddie seemed unusually quiet and jumpy, but then he was always moody and I thought little of it.

 

The drive gave me time to think more, not exactly a welcome exercise. Since Freddie and I had first hooked up about a year ago, I hadn’t let it affect my day to day behavior much and neither had he. We had an explicit understanding to keep it a secret, more out of laziness than anything else…I, for one, did not relish the effort it would take to explain things to Brian. It was purely physically, or so I had always thought, and admittedly nice to have a no strings attached outlet from time to time. Perhaps I was a fool to never consider my willingness in this matter as having broader implications for my sexuality and who I might be attracted to.

 

I followed Freddie up the three flights of stairs to my door. I studied the curve of his ass through his tight, white trousers and thought back to our first time, desperately looking for clues.

 

We had been rehearsing, in the small practice room at Imperial that had been our usual space for a while. I had auditioned for Smile in that room, it was familiar, safe. Somebody had brought around beer and we had whiled away the evening, playing and listening to music, and drinking until a comfortable fog had descended over me.

 

Somehow, Freddie and I had made it back to my place. The details were a bit hazy by now. He tasked himself with getting me ready for bed.

 

_I am pulled up close behind Freddie as he tows me into the bedroom. Abruptly, he stops to tug back the blankets on the bed and I run into him, lingering a bit too long. I press against him, the enjoyment of his warmth penetrating through the fuzz filling my head. I nuzzle my nose into his hair, something I would have never dared sober and something I only hazily remember the next day._

_“Freddie, you smell delicious,” I inform him, unsteadily._

_He ignores my comment and tries to steer me out of his hair and towards the bed. “Come on then, let’s get you into bed.”_

_“I’m not that drunk,” I protest, tripping over the edge of the rug and falling back against Freddie._

_He snorts in disbelief, “Of course not, Roger, you are just humping my leg for the hell of it, huh?”_

_I look down and giggle a little in surprise as I find myself doing exactly that. In my inebriated state, it seems perfectly natural and even feels good enough to provoke a small twitch in response from my groin. I decide not to give him any encouragement. Verbal encouragement that is. “I would do no such thing. I can get a hundred women prettier than you, Freddie Bulsara.”_

_“Uh huh, of course you can,” Freddie says, smiling bemusedly. “Now just take off your jacket and clothes and we will get you tucked in.”_

_“What about your clothes?” I try to flash him my most debonair smile, but I think I end up just smirking at him drunkenly._

 

I haven’t asked Freddie what was going through his mind that night. Maybe I will one of these days if this band thing ever ends up going anywhere. He must have been worried about what I would do the next morning when I had time to sober up and reflect. Maybe he was drunk enough not to care about the ramifications either.

 

_Freddie inhales deeply, searching my face. I stare back at him, trying to look intense and sure of myself. In truth, I have no idea what I am doing or why I am doing it. After an eternity, Freddie pulls off his shirt, only breaking our eye contact as he takes it over his head. I respond in kind, fumbling only slightly with my belt and almost losing my balance as I hop awkwardly on one foot to remove the too tight jeans._

 

It probably would have been more awkward if we hadn’t been spending so much time together, with the band and in our stall at Kensington. In the end it was natural, more like helping someone scratch an itch than forging everlasting bonds.

 

_He crushes our erections together and we rut against each other like randy, masturbating teenagers. But masturbation never felt this warm, this wild. The soft, coolness of the skin of his palms pressed against my shoulders contrasts sharply with the almost pain of his hipbones digging into mine and the heat of his cock. I feel tension building in my balls and I grit my teeth to prolong the moment._

_“This feels incredible,” I gasp, hoping that speaking can distract me just enough._

_In answer, Freddie pushes his hand between us and grasps both of us in a maddeningly tight grip. The sensation sends me over the edge and Freddie quickly follows as I spasm against him._

_“Ah, hell,” his voice trembles a bit and does not sound like him at all. He pulls away, looks down and says, “God, what a fucking mess.” That sounds more like him._

_I laugh, with an edge of hysteria. “That is precisely correct. A fucking mess indeed.”_

“What are you thinking about?” Freddie asked, curiously, as he pushed me back against a reliably sturdy desk in my living room.

 

I put my palms against the surface of the desk and hitched myself up to sit on top of it. The glass top was cold against my bare arse. Freddie had removed my clothes slowly but efficiently as soon as the door had closed behind us and he was in the process of doing the same for himself. “Nothing…you, I guess.”

 

Freddie’s lips twitched before settling into a soft smile. As he rummaged in a drawer, I pulled up my knees until my heels rested on the edge of the desk, leaning back on my elbows. Freddie rubbed his now slick fingers against the tight pucker of my opening and leaned in to kiss my neck. His kiss became more insistent, biting and sucking as he worked first one and then two fingers into me. I focused on relaxing myself, hissing with pain when he pressed too hard against contracted muscles and gasping with pleasure as he hit that sweet spot.

 

By the time he positioned himself against me, I was hard and my arms were weak with the strain of holding myself upright. Freddie lightly dragged his finger through the glossy drop of precome gathered at the sensitive tip of my cock and then raised his finger and licked it. I involuntarily bucked forward, impaling myself one agonizing inch onto him. He took the initiative and smoothly pushed himself all the way in. I cried out at the sudden fullness.

 

I watched Freddie as he drove into me, his eyes slightly unfocused and his lips parted and gasping for breath. The slide of slick, taut muscle on velvet skin was leaving me shaking and tense. Freddie wrapped one trembling hand around my aching shaft and roughly pulled at me in time with his thrust. A sudden, devastating feeling crashed over me and I knew that I would not be able to come. I closed my eyes and in my imagination, Freddie became taller and thinner, his hair lengthened and curled and he bit his lip in desperate focus.

 

“Oh, hell...” I cried, throwing my head back against the rough plaster wall and choking back my emotions that threatened to drive a certain name past my lips. My completion poured itself out over Freddie’s hand in uneven spurts and the sight was enough to make him thrust his way as deep as possible into me, rocking my hips off the desk. He collapsed on top of me and I could feel his shuddering orgasm stretching me around him.

 

“Still the bloody best, love,” he sighed into my hair.

 

In the moment of clarity following my orgasm, I had a moment of prescient fear for all of us. This was not a simple moment of horniness that could be resolved by fucking my friend. That glance across the stage was going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**May 1987**

_I'm just the shadow of the man I used to be_

_And it seems like there's no way out of this for me._

_I used to bring you sunshine, now all I ever do is bring you down._

 

 

I pulled the car into the wide, sweeping driveway feeling adrift and angry, wishing that the drive here had been longer. I gazed up at my destination, not sure if I wanted to storm in and yell at people or just drive away and avoid the situation all together.

 

The house stared unblinking back at me, all grey stone and dark windows. Freddie and I had bought the place five years ago, when the complexity of maintaining separate residences had become too much for me and Freddie had been taken by a flight of romantic fervor. We kept his place in London for when we didn’t fancy the long trip out here. _It can be our getaway, our estate in the woods_ , he had said. I wasn’t sure when those woods had started to become oppressive instead of private or when _our_ getaway had become so clearly Freddie’s, from the genuine Persian carpet in the foyer to the pale lavender silk sheets in our bedroom.

 

I leaned my head back against the headrest and rubbed the bridge of my nose tiredly, trying to ease a headache that pounded insistently behind my eyes and in my sinuses. I had spent most of the last week in London, dealing with various business aspects of the juggernaut that was Queen. The week had cumulated in a meeting with far too many people I barely knew during which we were supposed to sketch out the timing on the next album and, more importantly, begin the groundwork planning for the next tour.

 

It was incredible how complicated everything had become, somehow we had gone from trundling around the countryside in Roger’s van to needing to plan huge armadas of people and equipment nearly a year in advance. We all barely had time to catch our breath and regroup from last year and now it was time to do it all again.

 

The meeting had gone badly from the beginning. John was ensconced with a bunch of suits I barely recognized, going through sheaves of papers that he brusquely informed us contained the figures for the Magic tour. Roger sat brooding behind his shades on the other end of the table, snapping at the girls who were trying to bring him some tea and, I suspected, severely hungover. And Freddie…well, Freddie hadn’t deigned to show up.

 

I opened my eyes to find Terry at the window of the car, patiently waiting for me to get out so that he could take the car around back to the carriage house. Another thing that was adamantly Freddie’s. I preferred to drive myself, but Freddie hated it when I drove him places, so when we went out together, Terry drove.

 

I got out of the car and smiled apologetically at the driver. “Sorry, a lot on my mind, I guess.” He smiled back sympathetically and I suddenly felt like a spoiled brat, upset because the meeting to plan my next million dollars had been derailed by my temperamental lover. I sighed and walked to the front door, wondering if Freddie was even at home. I didn’t know what would make me angrier, that he hadn’t even bothered to leave the house or that he had been in London all along and simply chosen to not interrupt his plans to go to the meeting.

 

My footsteps echoed strangely in the empty house. Miko wandered up to me, nonchalantly, and twined through my legs. Miko was a favorite of mine, she was sweet and even-tempered and she liked me best too. She especially liked to perch on my shoulder from time to time. Higher than Freddie’s, I supposed. Now, however, she strolled away into the kitchen, more interested in the prospect of dinner than me. The main floor seemed more or less abandoned, so I slowly and a tad reluctantly ascended the stairs to the big bedroom in the rear of the house.

 

Light spilled out from beneath the bedroom door, making the hallway seem even darker and gloomier. I was somewhat relieved that I would not be left to stew in resentment alone and, in truth, I had missed him this week. I opened the door slowly. Freddie was in the closet, a few empty and wadded up shopping bags at his feet, wearing a loose, short kimono covered in cherry blossoms that made my throat constrict painfully.

 

“Did you get some shopping done today, then?” I tried to make my voice sound light and non-confrontational. I think I just sounded like a half strangled frog.

 

Freddie didn’t jump or even turn around at the sound of my voice. He continued sorting his purchases and bent to pick up a pair of chartreuse velvet trousers from the ground. I saw a flash of pale upper thigh as the kimono rode up and I swallowed, hard.

 

“There is a new boutique down in the village,” Freddie responded and I couldn’t begin to guess at the tone of his voice. “Fairly fashion forward for this godforsaken corner of the island, actually. I picked you up a few things as well.” I thought in horror of the neon trousers, but fortunately he turned holding a plain, green dress shirt. “You never wear green, dear, and I think it would bring out your eyes.”

 

“Freddie, never mind my eyes,” I said, exasperated and unable to hide behind small talk anymore. “Why didn’t you come to the meeting in London today?”

 

He slowly lowered the shirt and studied the closet floor. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

I threw up my hands in vexation. “Are you fighting with someone? Because this isn’t a very mature way to handle it.”

 

Anger sparked in his eyes as he tossed his head up to look at me. After a poisonous glare, he pushed past me and went into the bedroom. “I’m not fighting with anyone, Brian. I don’t _want_ to fight with you. I didn’t want to go to that fucking meeting because you were going to plan the next tour and I don’t want to go on fucking tour.”

 

I was surprised at his vehemence. “Freddie, it isn’t going to be put together overnight. There is plenty of time to prepare. We still have to record the album, for Pete’s sake. The last tour was hard on us all, but we don’t need to go so big again.” It wasn’t fair, for him to throw a temper tantrum like this and expect me to be calm and rational and soothing. I had had a long day too.

 

Freddie spun and grabbed me by the shoulders, pushing me down to sit on the bed. He sat down as well, turning towards me but not quite touching me. “Brian, you aren’t listening to me. It isn’t that I don’t want to tour right now.” He paused and licked the front of his teeth, fidgeting with nervous energy. “I don’t want to go on tour ever again.”

 

I stared at him blankly. I felt as if I had just had the wind knocked out of me and all I could do was sit and gape dumbly at the other man.

 

“What did you say?”

 

“I don’t want to tour anymore!” I winced at his raised voice. “I want to carry on recording, but…hell, I can’t chance anything happening on tour and it’s getting too risky.”

 

“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice low.

 

“Bloody hell, Brian! Are you going to make me spell it out? Fine, I am terrified that I will get sick or collapse or something and shows will have to be cancelled, explanations will have to be made and I will be under the public scrutiny like some fucking freak show,” he half-shouted, his voice high. I should have taken warning, but Freddie is prone to histrionics and I am accustomed to plowing on, relentless.

 

“You are perfectly fine, love,” I said, soothingly. “I know that it will be hard and tiring and you may have to make some sacrifices, but…”

 

“Sacrifice, darling?” he interrupted. “I’m not sure you know the meaning of the word.” I could hear the anger in his short, clipped words and see it in his eyebrows snapping together.

 

I felt that this wasn’t fair. I decided to give him a chance to explain. “What precisely do you mean by that?”

 

He looked down his nose at me, an impressive feat considering I was still half a head taller than him, even sitting. “I mean that you have never had to sacrifice anything in your whole life. Everything has been handed to you on a fucking silver platter.”

 

Now I was really livid. I couldn’t believe how self-centered he was being. “Goddammit, Fred. Do you think this has been easy for me? You know better than anyone what my parents think of us. How much more can I give to you? Give up for you?” I heard my voice climb to registers I normally couldn’t achieve and purposefully took a deep breath. “I give and I give and I have never asked for a single goddamn thing in return! Is it too much to ask for a little dedication and honesty? A little fucking _loyalty_?”

 

Freddie recoiled as if I had slapped him. I felt a passing moment of remorse that was quickly drowned by the force of my indignation. I was dimly aware that I was breathing too fast but couldn’t seem to calm myself, couldn’t seem to feel the tips of my fingers. Freddie stood up extremely quickly, grabbed the front of my shirt and shoved me against the wall. I shuddered in his grasp. I had never been afraid of him before but the fury knotting his brow was something I had never seen previously either.

 

“Those are awfully accusatory words coming from you, May,” he replied through gritted teeth, his voice low and deadly.

 

“I?!” I gasped. “I have never been unfaithful to you. I had every right after…”

 

He went pale and shoved me harder, as if he could stop my words through physical force. “You want a little honesty from _me_? When have you _ever_ been honest with me? You haven’t given yourself to anyone else. Fine. Have a fucking celebratory parade. But you sure as hell haven’t given all of you to me. You have always kept something back just for you.”

 

“Is that what you really think?” I hissed.

 

“What did you do when I told you I was sick? When I told you I’d betrayed you and fucked another man…or was it men, darling?” He smiled a fearsome smile. “And that I had received a death sentence for my crime?”

 

“Freddie…stop…” I was shaking my head, trying desperately to not have heard his words.

 

“Nothing. That’s what you did, what you gave me. You disappeared for _two_ weeks and then when you came back we never discussed it again. Except when you throw it in my face like this. It’s a pretty fucking low blow, Brian.”

 

“What did you want me to do, exactly? Scream at you? Throw things? What was done was done and I had to come to grips with that real quick,” I spat.

 

“Oh, you are so mature, aren’t you?” he said, his voice dripping with scorn.

 

I needed him out of my face. That old familiar urge to run away from confrontation was pulling at me like the addictions I’d never had. I grabbed his wrist and yanked it down, slipping out from between him and the wall. He had one hand twisted in my hair and I heard more than felt it as the hair ripped from my scalp and was left behind in Freddie’s clenched hand.

 

“Where are you going, Brian?”

 

“I don’t know—away. I can’t…”

 

“Don’t you _dare_ fucking leave,” he snarled and tackled me from behind, making me stumble forward. I had nearly regained my balance when my knee caught the edge of the bed and I collapsed on it, Freddie, off-guard, fell on top of me.

 

“Let me go.” We struggled to untangle ourselves from each other. I managed to slip out from beneath him and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. Freddie grabbed my arm and I tried to free myself by pushing against his shoulder and prying at his fingers with my other hand. His kimono had become loose in our struggle and now it fell from his shoulder. I glanced down before I could stop myself and saw his arousal. I faltered and Freddie threw me down onto the bed.

 

“I am not going to let you run away this time,” he growled from between clenched teeth. He seized my waistband and forced my trousers down over my narrow hips. The trousers were tight and I gasped as they hitched up on my hipbones before coming down with a violent jerk from the other man.

 

“Stop,” I pleaded, more than a little alarmed at this side of Freddie. I knew that he was prone to fits of temper, but I had never before been his target. It was as something had broken loose in him and nothing was stopping his frustration from pouring out.

 

He pushed me over onto my back and shrugged completely out of the kimono. “You are mine, Brian. Don’t you get it? You couldn’t leave me if you tried.” He grabbed my limp cock roughly and a pulse of electricity coursed through me. A week was a long time to go without something to which one had become accustomed.

 

“Freddie, please.” His hand was relentless, coaxing me to a hardness that I most desperately did not want. He was clever, though, and had years of experience at finding just the right spots. I wrenched myself from his grip and half-crawled and half-scooted across the bed. He followed in a graceless scramble, grabbing the waistband of my trousers which were caught around my knees. Off balance, I fell onto the bed hard, striking my head against the headboard and feeling rather dazed.

 

Freddie pushed me onto my back and kissed me in a way that caused my overactive brain think of the male members of a certain species of tropical fish using their mouths to fight for dominance. My hands scrabbled ineffectively against his chest and he bit my lower lip hard enough to make me squeal in pain.

 

“Stop this.” I gasped. “I know you are frustrated and I haven’t been handling things well. But we can work it out together.”

 

“Oh, you know _so_ bloody much, don’t you?” His tone was bitingly sarcastic and I was instantly resentful. I shoved him hard and he ducked his head for balance and struck me on the cheekbone with his forehead. Pain blossomed under my eye and made me blink rapidly. Freddie was writhing against me roughly, pushing our erections together and for a moment I was lost and thrust back into his heat, my high-running emotions crossing easily into lust.

 

He crushed our mouths together again and our teeth clashed jarringly. I thought of all the sweet, chaste kisses we have shared, the deep and full ones fraught with passion and desire, but somehow none of those kisses had cracked open my heart and shoved in my face what I felt for the other man like this clumsy, aggressive exchange of tongues and hands and lips wrestling for ascendency.

 

He pulled away, inhaled raggedly and flipped me over onto my stomach. He straddled me and I felt claustrophobic and trapped beneath him.

 

“Get off of me,” I growled.

 

Freddie clutched at my wrists, pinning them above my head. I struggled but I could not shake the stronger man’s grip.

 

I was gasping with exertion and I could feel Freddie trembling against me. His erection was pressed against my thigh and suddenly I was taken by some fey and desperate emotion. It all hit me at once, my increasing alienation from him, my desperate longing for him, his illness, the future of our music. I choked back a sob and shifted. Deftly, I positioned his naked cock against my entrance. I took a deep breath.

 

Abruptly, I was flung across the bed and toppled off the edge. I winced as my tailbone hit the floor with a sickening crack. My side stung from the violent shove that Freddie had just dealt me. I looked up to find his face above me which was nearly purple with fury.

 

“Are you fucking insane?! Have you completely lost your mind?” he screamed.

 

The immensity of what I had almost attempted hit me hard. “I’m sorry…oh, God, I wasn’t thinking.” I choked and my voice cracked. “I just love you so much…I can’t do this. I can’t abide the thought of going on with you…gone.”

 

“You’ve lost it, Brian. Have you any idea what it would do to me if…I could not bear…” His face had gone deathly pale.

 

“I’m sorry!” I wailed. I wished desperately that I could undo my action.

 

“Nobody drives me as crazy as you.” Freddie’s expression had become strangely calm and he was staring at me in a way that made me feel terribly naked and vulnerable.

 

“Freddie…” I hitched myself up onto the bed, kicking off the entangling trousers and pulling a pillow onto my lap as a shield.

 

“So you want me to fuck you, hmm? Feel like living on the edge tonight, do you?” He flashed me his wicked smile, his _fuck me_ smile, the one that normally had me eager to do just that. But everything was off kilter tonight and I did not think that smile meant what it normally did.

 

“You’re scaring me, Freddie.” He acted as if he hadn’t heard. He rummaged in the drawer of the nightstand for a moment before finding a condom and deliberately putting it on, holding my eyes the whole time. I felt a rush of blood to my face.

 

He got up on the bed and I tried to crawl away. He caught me by my hips, saying, “This is what you wanted.”

 

He spat on his hand and half-heartedly lubricated himself. I instinctively tensed and tried to free myself when I felt him nudge against my entrance. His fingers dug into me and he held on with ruthless vigor as he pressed harder. Freddie forced himself past the tight ring of muscle and it was neither fast nor smooth. Relentlessly, his cock split me open, sliding for a blessed instant before catching again with searing friction. The pain was inexorable as well, I thought I felt something tear and every muscle in my body seemed to contract at once.

 

I told myself that I would not cry in front of him, that I would not show weakness like that. But physical pain broke me where emotional distress had not and as he pulled out, jerkily, tears leapt to my eyes and streamed silently down my face. I buried my head in the pillows and tried not to let him see. My shoulders only shook a little.

 

The pain ebbed and then broke over me again with his every thrust. In the moments of relief, my body acted with well-trained reflex, arousal building despite everything.

 

“Tell me what you want.”

 

“Freddie…” He slammed in deeper, hitting my prostate with a detached ruthlessness, hard enough to make my eyes tear more. It also sent shock waves of pleasure deep to the root of my cock, making my balls draw up in anticipation. He stopped thrusting and it was almost enough to make me weep in frustration.

 

“Tell me.”

 

“I want you to fuck me. I want to come on your cock. I want you to come so hard and deep inside of me. _God!_ ” I hated myself in that moment. I hated that I could need him so much when he was doing such awful things to me. I hated that I was such a bloody coward. I hated him for what he had done to the amazing, miraculous thing that we had made together. And I hated my orgasm that was building like a terrible storm. Freddie grabbed my hips tighter and hit deep inside of me with a deadly rhythm and when I came it was like the uncontrollable, wrenching spasms that accompany dry heaves. My muscles tightened around him and he collapsed on top of me, crying out inarticulately.

 

For a long moment, no one moved. I barely dared to breathe, trapped beneath his bulk. Eventually, Freddie pushed himself up and pulled out, his softened cock still feeling as if it had dragged half of my insides out along with it. I rolled over on my side and curled up, closing my eyes as if shutting out the scene would make it all not have happened. The silence stretched on until I felt compelled to break it.

 

“When are you going to tell the others?” My voice was hoarse and awful-sounding even to my own ears.

 

With his back to me, sitting on the edge of the bed, restlessly fingering the hem of his kimono, I could not tell what his expression looked like. “Leave it alone, Brian.”

 

“I think they deserve to know,” I said, pulling myself up, reluctantly so that I could see him better.

 

He stood, abruptly and threw the kimono around his shoulders. “We will tell them that I don’t want to tour anymore. That is all. Let them form their own speculations as to why. I don’t owe anyone anything.” He walked out of the room and I waited for him to look back but he never did.

 

I watched the empty doorway for a long time. I sat, huddled, naked and cold on the bed. I drew my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, trying not to focus on the sickly ticklish slide of blood down my perineum. I knew that Freddie would be back soon, that he probably hadn’t even left and was storming about in the other wing of the house, breaking things that he would mourn over tomorrow. Indeed, tomorrow he would be all soft kisses and apologies, he would fuss over me, he would see the bloodstained sheets and be beside himself with remorse.

 

I looked at the telephone sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. Reaching out with an arm that did not feel like my own, I picked up the receiver and slowly dialed the only number I could think of.

 

He picked up on the third ring. “Hello?” He spoke softly but I couldn’t tell if he was alone or not.

 

“Roger…” I whispered.

 

“Brian? Is that you? What’s wrong, Brian?” His voice sounded like it was coming from a different planet, one where there was music and laughter and not the cold, dark one I was on.

 

I hesitated, but he obviously knew something had happened and I couldn’t think of another plausible reason I was calling anyway. “Freddie and I had a fight.”

 

“Oh, God. Was it about the meeting? Brian, stay right there, I’m coming over.” Panic hit me. I definitely did not want him to see me like this or Freddie to know that I had called him.

 

“No, Roger. Freddie’s still here. I…I just wanted someone to talk to, and…” I paused. Why had I called him, precisely?

 

“What?”

 

“I couldn’t think of what else to do,” I said, truthfully. “I know you didn’t think it was a good idea for us to get together in the first place.” Freddie and I had decided, all those years ago, that it was best not to hide our relationship from the band. Freddie was a private, but definitely not a secretive man and it would have felt uncomfortably close to lying to me.

 

“No, Brian, I…” Roger replied, sounding more apologetic than necessary. I did not pause to ponder that.

 

“Be quiet. You know, I am not actually as obtuse about these things as you think.” There was silence on the other end of the line. I pressed on. “I know your policy. To keep relationships as superficial as possible to avoid getting hurt.”

 

There was a huff of air over the phone, it could have either been a snort of denial or a sigh of relief. “I don’t think that you and Freddie’s relationship is a mistake, actually. I do worry about him hurting you. He says a lot of things he doesn’t mean.”

 

“I know that.” I felt more than a little numb, as if we were discussing someone else. “Roger, do you ever think about people dying? Your family…friends?” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Freddie’s secret was not mine to divulge and the last thing he would want was Roger getting suspicious.

 

“Brian, what is this about?” For a change, Roger sounded genuinely concerned.

 

“I don’t know…nothing really,” I muttered, trying to change the subject. “Sometimes I just feel so aimlessly worried.”

 

Roger laughed a little. “No, you…a worrier? I would have never guessed.”

 

I smiled and shifted. I could not suppress a gasp of pain as my movement disturbed sore muscles that had stiffened while I sat.

 

 

Roger again displayed more perceptiveness than I had ever given him credit for. “Did he hurt you?”

 

I couldn’t tell him the truth and I felt compelled to apologize for Freddie’s behavior. “No, if anything I hurt myself. I keep making him into something he is not, you know? I don’t know why I do that.”

 

“You love him,” Roger said simply and almost a little sadly.

 

“Yeah, I guess I do…after everything. It isn’t easy, though.” I shook my head and a breeze of crisp spring air wafted through the bedroom. Someone must have opened a window somewhere. It made me feel hopeful, somehow.

 

“I don’t think love is ever easy,” Roger said, an edge to his voice that I couldn’t define.

 

“Roger…” I started to say.

 

“Brian…I wanted to tell you…” he said in a rush.

 

“…thanks for being such a good friend.” I finished over him. I stopped. “What were you saying?”

 

“I…nothing. Just good luck with everything. Call me again if you need to.” And with that the line went dead with a final click.

 

I hung up the phone slowly, a nagging sensation that I had missed out on some important subtext of our conversation. 


	4. Chapter 4

**November 1992**

_Oh Lord, somebody, somebody!_

_Can anybody find me somebody to love?_

_Got no feel, I got no rhythm._

_I just keep losing my beat._

 

Roger closed his eyes briefly as the memory faded. Faded and distant, perhaps, but always nagging there in the back of his mind. It all seemed so fucking long ago. How could he ever have guessed that a distracted look across a pathetic little stage would become the context and reason for every decision that he had ever made? The dark trees whipping past the car looked only vaguely familiar, but trees were trees, weren’t they? He refused to succumb to the dawning suspicion that he had missed his turn and pushed the car onwards, revving up the engine as a pitiful distraction.

 

It had taken a very long time for the impact of that night to dawn on him. He rounded a corner a bit faster than was strictly safe and muttered to the instrument panel, “Taylor, you’re not the brightest one out there, are you?” He had been young and easily diverted, he supposed. It had all seemed so easy back then. The whole world had seemed like a big glorious playground for his cock. Freddie by day, Dominique by night and all the star struck girls he could handle in between. Yes, it had been terribly easy, so why hadn’t he ever been happy?

 

Dominique. What a fucking mistake that had been. Roger gritted his teeth and barely noticed as the needle of the speedometer crept further clockwise. They were like tinder and matches together and when it was good, it was great, it was all excitement and fun and staying up late into the night laughing and fucking and doing stupid shit that didn’t matter at all but seemed so funny at the moment. But, of course, when it was bad, the fire burned just as intensely. They had fights that were a wonder to behold. Knockdown, drag out fights and they didn’t care who witnessed. Freddie learned fairly quickly to at least get them out to the garden when things flared up at his place. He didn’t approve of their efforts to “redecorate.” Dom had wanted kids. Roger hadn’t wanted them until he had them and then they had become a whole other problem. A wonderful, infuriating, messy problem. So they had married. Another mistake.

 

But while Dominique had been a mistake, she had at least been a distraction. A distraction from the growing problem that was Brian. So while he knew when things had begun with Brian, it had only been later that he had become a Problem. Brian and Freddie’s relationship that they hadn’t bothered to exactly hide had hit him like a cheap shot to the gut and changed everything.

 

Roger shook his head, he had been over this so many times but he was still amazed at the shock he had felt to see them together. _Freddie and Brian…I really should have seen that one coming._ It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had any warning. Brian had been distracted all through that first trip to Japan and it wasn’t due to the fact that the drummer couldn’t stop watching him intently. And talking about him incessantly when he wasn’t around. No wonder Freddie took notice of him, Roger did more to sell the man to the fickle frontman than anything else.

 

Japan was perfectly romantic, they had all felt like rock stars for the first time, it was the perfect place to fall in love. Roger had fallen in love with Brian. He had been too busy obsessing over the tall guitarist to notice Brian and Freddie falling in love with each other. Right under everyone’s noses. _Just my fuckin’ luck._

 

Roger was barely aware of the drive and certainly not aware that he had pushed the car to a speed that he would not normally attempt on a dark and winding road. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white and as he thought about those early seeds of Freddie and Brian’s relationship, his foot twitched and urged the car even faster.

 

Talking about mistakes, this last year had been a long string of fuckups. Making a move on Brian before Freddie was even properly laid to rest. _Nice one, Rog. Way to be the world’s biggest arsehole. No wonder he’s a fucking mess these days._ He should have just stayed away from the other man because every time he went near him his inhibitions just got wrecked to hell. Bile rose in the back of his throat and he swallowed hard. _What was I supposed to do? Brian and John were the only part of my life left after everything suddenly went boom. Like a moth to the motherfucking flame, I suppose._

 

A fox darted out from the woods and into the road. It registered in Roger’s brain only as a sudden flash of movement and before he could consciously decide to act, his muscles took over and jerked the steering wheel towards the oncoming lane. A lorry, lights blazing, filled his vision and the sound of its horn made his heart leap up into the back of his throat.

 

Quick, split-second snapshots of the next events seemed to flash in front of Roger and freeze there for agonizing moments. His hands on the steering wheel. Yanking it to the left hard and thinking, _too much, oh God, too much_. The speedometer and the number of the speed he had unknowingly pushed the car to. In that instant, he only had time to realize that this was all going to end very badly. More flashes of understanding, time seemed to be moving in shuddering jolts. The jarring shock as the car left the road and the sudden view of the clear, night sky, perfectly clear and glittering with stars. _I don’t want to die,_ the thought crystalized in a scream as the dark woods closed in on the car with staggering speed and then there was nothing.

 

***

 

Roger woke slowly collapsed over the steering wheel and with a dawning panic as he realized he couldn’t see anything. He bolted upright and immediately regretted it as searing pain throbbed through his head. He instinctively put his hand to his head and touched warm wetness. Carefully exploring, Roger found a shallow gash on his forehead and deduced that the blood coursing down his face must have blinded him. He rubbed his face carefully on his shirt and wiggled his toes. When he had determined that everything seemed to work correctly, he began to attempt to figure out the next challenge of freeing himself from the mangled remains of the car.

 

As he carefully shifted himself, the _ping, ping, ping_ of the cooling engine sent a fresh wave of adrenaline coursing through his body and he struggled with his seatbelt. Roger knew that it would only take one spark to send the coupe up in great fireball and put an end to his luck, which had been excellent so far, considering that he was alive and in relatively one piece.

 

The door of the car seemed to be jammed shut but the window was broken out and he could just wriggle through if he ignored a screaming pain in his neck and contorted his hips just so. He staggered a safe distance from the car and then collapsed on the grass of the verge, staring at the huge, ancient oak that had proved devastatingly effective at stopping the runaway car. He had struck it on the left hand side of the vehicle and the passenger seat was unrecognizable from the force. _Another bit of luck there._

 

He looked towards the road which seemed to be deserted. _Of course that God be damned lorry would be the only other vehicle on the road tonight…and didn’t bother to stop._ Cursing lorry drivers with an underdeveloped sense of civic duty, Roger painfully got himself up to his feet and began to make his way down the road, limping slightly and with one last look at the car. _Damn it, I_ liked _that car._ He vaguely remembered passing an isolated petrol station shortly before the crash. He could make it there to call someone and hopefully the cops needn’t be involved. More scandal was the last thing any of them needed.

 

The walk stretched on unending, the soft darkness enfolding him until he began to think deliriously that he had been walking forever and would continue to walk until he died. His ankle had begun to hurt with a dull ache that made each step a battle of wills. He had to stop frequently to allow waves of dizziness to pass and to fight down a growing nausea. _I could just lie down right here forever and it would all be alright. I could be some sort of landmark, halfway between the wrecked up Alfa Romeo and the mythical petrol station._ He fought off the urge to give up and concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other.

 

The glow of car park lights did not at first register in his blurred brain and when Roger realized that the petrol station was only about a hundred yards in front of him, he stopped dead. Nervously, he rubbed his face once more and pulled his coat tighter around himself. It would not do for the manager to call the police when he spied a blood soaked man staggering up to the station.

 

The last few feet of the walk seemed to stretch on forever and by the time he was bathed in the harsh fluorescent light spilling from the store’s plate glass windows, he was panting and his ankle was throbbing in time to the splitting headache pounding through his head. He spotted a neglected but thankfully functional looking payphone near the door and headed towards it.

 

Roger stared at the payphone. Someone had left a scrawled phone number next to the name ‘Suzy’ and a wad of gum was stuck on the back of the receiver. Suddenly, he had no idea who to call. His whole plan had consisted of making it to a phone and now that he was here, he realized that he had not planned far enough ahead.

 

Always before, when sticky situations arose and he found his mode of arrival to be untenable for one reason or another, he would call Freddie. He could always manage to catch him by hook or crook although it sometimes involved the machinations of Phoebe. Freddie would discreetly send his driver to pick Roger up, no uncomfortable questions asked. Roger had no idea what Freddie would tell Brian about the phone calls, but there were never any odd looks from the guitarist so he assumed Freddie always had some excuse or explanation. Maybe Brian had learned to ignore the other man’s late night calls.

 

Calling Dominique was out of the question. She would no doubt come and get him, they were still on fairly good terms for the sake of the children, but she would no doubt wake the kids up and stuff them in the car just to be able to deliver an impressive lecture on what a bad role model he was. He wasn’t sure he was up to that tonight. Besides, she would fuss over his wounds and want to take him to a hospital.

 

John would be asleep and, if woken up, he would be in a nasty mood and inclined to deliver his own lecture, probably on the topic of Brian in regards to Roger getting over him and Roger was even more unprepared for that. His other friends were more along the lines of drinking buddies and not waking up in the middle of the night to pick you up and take you home buddies. Brian…well, obviously not Brian for very clear reasons.

 

God, he missed Freddie. He wondered if this whole thing would be as difficult if he didn’t feel his friend’s lack like a deep wound gone gangrene and aching. Things were complicated enough without that added layer too.

 

He wanted to collapse on the curb in front of the phone and give up. _Maybe if I fall asleep, some kindly stranger will find me and deliver me to the nearest hospital. Maybe if I start bleeding again nobody will recognize me._ He chuckled at the thought and then started to laugh, stopping when he heard the edge of hysteria in his voice. He dimly recognized that he wasn’t thinking very rationally.

 

“Taylor? Roger Taylor? From Queen?”

 

He turned slowly to find a woman about his mother’s age standing behind him wearing an expression that was half-surprised and half-nervous. He blurted out the first thing that crossed his mind, “You don’t look like the type to be out at midnight.” He sighed, trying to think through the pain in his head. “I didn’t mean to say that. Yes, I am from Queen.”

 

She quirked a half-smile, “It’s alright. I’m _not_ the type to be out this late, but my grandson needed a ride and his mother wouldn’t understand and I just want him to be safe, you know.”

 

He laughed. “I wish my gran had been so cool.”

 

He watched as several emotions seemed to war across her face and eventually maternal instinct won out. She pursed her lips and then said, hesitantly, “I don’t mean to pry…but you look like you need a ride too and maybe a sympathetic ear.”

 

He wanted to refuse. The woman was a stranger and probably wanted something from him. He opened his mouth to tell her he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. “Please, a ride would be wonderful.” He sighed.

 

She smiled crookedly and he felt a little better. “My name is Maddie, by the way.” She gestured towards a black saloon car. “I am parked right over there.”

 

He got into the car heavily, trying not to open up the gash on his forehead again and bleed all over the nice lady’s car. That would not be very polite. They drove in silence for a while. Finally, Maddie spoke. “Okay, spill. I know there is something bothering you. You don’t know me from Adam, but I promise not to run off to the media with your story, so you can’t get a much better confessional booth than this.”

 

Roger hesitated, nervous about her prescience. He longed to be able to talk about it all, but he was cautious still. He decided to frame it in vague terms and not mention the accident. Maybe she thought that he had been in a fight or something.

 

“Well, there’s this gu—this person that I am in love with. I have been for a long time. But there was this other guy but he’s de—gone now.” Roger paused, think he had clumsily given it all away but Maddie was listening calmly and not staring at him in appalled shock or anything. He went on, stammering slightly, “And I think that this person has feelings for me too but they are so wrapped up in guilt and grief…I’m sorry, I don’t think that I am making very much sense, am I?”

 

Maddie didn’t answer at first but stared thoughtfully out at the road. Finally she said, “No, I think I understand you perfectly. I’m sorry but I don’t have any magic advice for you, Mr. Taylor.” She glanced quickly at him. “I think you need to give this person some space to work through everything that they are feeling on their own. They are hurt and confused and you are just making things worse at the moment. It really is true what they say, time heals all wounds.” The car slowed to a stop. “I think we have reached your destination.”

 

Roger looked up at the big and empty house. It felt like it belonged to someone else. His ankle was demanding attention and the pain coursing through his head was making it difficult to see straight, but he felt a little more hopeful somehow. And more importantly than that he felt a renewed sense of patience. _Time…that’s all we need. You’ve waited this long, you probably can wait a little longer._

***


	5. Chapter 5

**November 1978**

_Torn between the lover and the love you leave behind._

_You're headed for disaster 'cos you never read the signs._

 

I rested my head on the cool porcelain and tried to concentrate just on the sensation of it. Pressure from the unyielding hardness of it. The temperature difference between its smooth surface and the clammy, flushed heat of my skin. If I focused hard enough perhaps I could forget the insistent pounding in my temples, the fuzzy, sour taste in my mouth and the lurching unease in my stomach.

 

Thinking about lurching stomachs was a mistake. “Oh, God,” I managed to choke out before I curled my body over the toilet and attempted to empty the by this point non-existent contents of my stomach in painful, hacking heaves. Cool hands threaded through my hair and held it back, leaving my hands free to brace myself against the seat.

 

John was perched on the edge of the bathtub, patiently tending to me. As the spasms gradually ceased, I leaned back, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. He let go of my hair and absentmindedly began to rub my back. The simple contact felt surprisingly wonderful and I attempted to carry out my plan of concentrating on external sensations once more. It was amazing how good that temporary relief after throwing up felt. You could feel like you were on the edge of death but once you managed to throw up, it felt like you were ready to resume normal activity. At least temporarily. My headache took the opportunity to come pounding back, saying, _excuse me, I think you are feeling much too well at the moment._

 

“That’s it, I swear off drinking,” I croaked, accepting the glass of water that John handed me, gratefully. I rinsed my mouth and spat in the toilet, reaching out to flush with a trembling hand. “There is no possible way it is worth feeling like this much crap the next day. In fact, I am never going to even go out anymore. I will just sit at home and eat a healthy diet and get regular exercise.” John refrained from expressing his skepticism and passed me a warm flannel. I was filled with a sudden maudlin rush of affection for the other man. “You are my freaking best friend, Deaky,” I said with feeling.

 

John shifted on the tub and made a noise that I couldn’t quite tell if it was a chuckle or a snort. “Maybe you should stop talking,” he replied dryly. “Before you make any more promises you can’t keep.”

 

I laid down on the floor in front of the loo and took what small measure of comfort I could from the fluffy white rug I was curled up on. My head was half on the icy cold tile and half on the prickly rug, but moving it all the way on the rug seemed to be such a monumental task that it was beyond contemplation. I stared at the linty grime gathered in the caulk at the base of the toilet, nausea growing once more inside of me.

 

I wasn’t sure when I had started drinking so much. Or maybe I was drinking the same amount and just getting older. When I was younger, of course, my body seemed to bounce back miraculously from the wildest party night, with perhaps a slight headache and tiredness the next day that I had called a hangover. A chuckle that was not much more than a shudder ran through my prone body. Yeah, twenty-fucking-nine years, a real old man I was. And of course last night had been exceptional circumstances.

 

I groaned and looked up blearily at John. _There, that movement was manageable._ He appeared relatively fresh-faced. His hair was a disaster and his clothes had that rumpled air that you only getting by sleeping in them but he emphatically did not look like he had been run over by a van. I could only imagine how bad I looked if I only looked half as terrible as I felt. “How come you are doing so great, Deaky? Last I remember, you were keeping up with me pretty well.”

 

John ran a hand through his tangled hair and didn’t look down at me or reply. His expression was as unreadable as ever. I had long ago learned to read my bandmate’s emotions by his actions rather than by any clues left on his face. That is, I assumed I had. “How much of last night _do_ you remember, Rog?” he finally inquired, a faint tinge of weary curiosity in his voice.

 

“I remember Freddie signing some bird’s ass,” I blurted out. John cut his eyes at me, impatiently. I tried to think. I definitely remembered at least the beginning of a large string of daiquiris. I remembered a large American who claimed to be at least tangentially related to the music industry challenging me to a few rounds of shots. _That had probably been a mistake._ I remembered a brief flash through the slit of a bathroom stall of Freddie and Brian tangled together and while Brian’s arse might have been involved, Freddie was definitely not signing it. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. I really did feel quite nauseous again.

 

John was pursing his lips together. I didn’t even need to look at him, I could practically _hear_ him doing it. “Well, _I_ remember what you did last night at least. You cornered Mary by the girl covered in cold cuts and told her, quite loudly, I might add, that if you’d ever had the misfortune to have fucked Freddie like her, you would be upset that he’d now taken up with a poodle-headed nerd who wore, and I quote, ‘bloody stupid footwear.’”

 

“Oh, God,” I groaned and kept my gaze averted from the other man. “Brian didn’t hear, did he?”

 

John shifted again and I chanced a glance. He was staring at me oddly. “No. And Freddie didn’t hear you either and apparently no one told him because you are still mostly alive.” John paused and picked at a cuticle distractedly. I reflected on the probably magnitude of Freddie’s wrath had he overheard. _Probably at least a 7.2. He hates when anyone verbally abuses Mary…and I don’t remember it so he tends to count those outburst as ‘truth serum confessions.’ Ugh, maybe 7.8, because I insulted Brian’s hair. Freddie has been even more protective of The Mane than Brian lately. Hmm, mixed with his possible hangover, we might be talking 8.0…_ John cleared his throat and jolted me out of my fairly ridiculous musings.“How long have you fancied Brian?” he asked, quietly.

 

My stomach twisted and I could no longer suppress the queasiness that had built up to the breaking point. John waited patiently as I once again attempted to hack up my lungs into the bowl. His long fingers did feel very comforting twined in my hair. “I’ve known about you and Freddie for a while, of course,” he continued while he waited for me to finish. “But that was all just good fun, huh? I think this is something different.”

 

“How did you know?” I gasped. I had been careful. So bloody careful that sometimes even I forgot that I liked Brian. No, liked was the wrong word. _Craved. Obsessed over. Yearned for._ Those were the good days, when I forgot. On the bad days, well…

 

“Umm, you didn’t stop with making fun of his hair and shoes. You were quite vicious. I suppose ‘the lady doth protest too much’ and all that.” John waved a hand vaguely. I racked my brain for any more recollections of the night and came up short.

 

“You aren’t going to tell anyone, are you?” I said, plaintively, trying my best puppy dog eyes on him. The last thing I needed was outside meddling.

 

John’s eyebrows rose towards his hairline. “I won’t have to if you keep drinking like that.”

 

I groaned. “I didn’t drink that much,” I pointed out, fully intending to explain to him my just-getting-older theory, but he interrupted before I had a chance.

 

“Roger. Can you even think of the last time you remember getting yourself home after a night out?” His tone had an edge of disapproval on it and made me prickle with defensiveness.

 

I racked my brain. There had been a lot of confused mornings lately. “Well, I obviously always make it back okay…”

 

John looked at me pityingly. “We take turns watching you. Or assign someone.” I blushed under his gaze and wanted to lay back down next to the loo and hope the ground would swallow me whole. John continued, pinning me under his merciless gaze. “I don’t think that blackout nights are really going to help you forget who Brian is screwing in the next suite down.”

 

I bit my lip. I had nothing to say to that. Sometimes I really wished that John didn’t watch people so carefully. The urge to throw up came over me again and I coughed and leaned over the toilet again in preparation. Interrupting us, a melodious voice floated through the hotel suite.

 

“Lovies? Are there any survivors in here? I’ve come to see if there are any takers for a recovery brekkie.” Freddie poked his head around the door and wrinkled his nose at the sight of me bent over the toilet. “Oh, Roger! I guess you don’t want any.” I straightened too quickly and pressed a hand to my temple as the room spun.

 

“No, I’m okay. I want coffee and tea and some toast. In that order.” I glanced at Freddie and coughed again to settle my stomach. Despite faint dark circles beneath his eyes and the edge of a hickey peeking out from beneath his collar, he didn’t look too much the worse for wear. _Well, shit._

Freddie glanced at John, his dark eyes suspicious. John’s face was carefully blank and I looked too sick to give him any clues about our conversation. “Deaky, good man for caring for your fallen comrade.” John laughed and accepted Freddie’s hand to pull him to his feet. Together, they hoisted me up while I simultaneously concentrated on my balance and my stomach.

 

We managed to make it down the heavily decorated hotel restaurant without incident. Freddie cast a critical eye over the drapery but accepted a seat at the table that a harried looking hostess led us to without comment. I wrapped my napkin around my glass, _Americans and their ice_ , and pressed it to my forehead, gratefully.

 

“I think I’m in love,” Freddie sighed dramatically and propped his chin on his hand. John looked up from the menu with a raised eyebrow. “You may all laugh and say you never expected me to settle down, but this is it, this is the one, the whole kit and caboodle, it’s over, that’s it, stick a fork in me, I’m done,” he finished with a drawn out sigh.

 

I couldn’t help the eye roll. Freddie saw and straightened abruptly in his chair. “Roger has something to say to us all, apparently,” he said, with a distinct chill in his voice.

 

“There’re only three of us, Fred,” I replied, wearily. It was far too early for theatrics.

 

“Shut up and just say what you obviously want to say,” he snapped.

 

“Well…it’s you, Freddie.” Now that they had begun, my words came in a rush, months of frustration bubbling over. “You fall in love every other week. And now you are going to settle down with Brian, of all people.” I threw up my hands in exasperation. “You two’ve had a…a thing for a few years now and while, frankly, I am surprised Brian has stuck with it, you haven’t exactly been jonesing for commitment. Until now. What has he said to you?”

 

“You are awfully quick to assume that it is Brian who is pushing things.” There was more than a note of warning in Freddie’s voice. More like a whole symphony.

 

I shrugged with one shoulder and the movement sent a fresh jolt of pain and nausea through me. I was dimly aware that my hangover was a large part of the cause for my foul temper but I couldn’t help feeling fed up with Freddie’s histronics. I charged ahead, heedless, “I know what it is. You’re in your mid-thirties...”

 

“Early thirties,” Freddie growled.

 

“Whatever. You want to play domestic bliss with Brian for a while. Fine.” I adjusted my sunglasses and took a swig of my tea. Freddie’s face had turned red and was approaching an expression that would be best described as apoplectic. “But have you thought about what Brian will go through when you grow tired of him? You can’t even finish a damn book, Freddie. What makes you think you are remotely capable of this?”

 

I could see Freddie trying to control his temper and failing. “Oh, it’s _so_ nice to get relationship advice from _you,_ Roger,” he snarled. “Have you managed to knock up that poor French girl yet? You might as well let her know there isn’t ever going to be a ring involved.”

 

I stood up abruptly, pushing my chair back with a screech. Freddie followed and grabbed my shirt lapels in a surprisingly strong grip. We stood for a split second, breathing heavily and staring at each other with John hovering half-out of his chair, before we were interrupted by a familiar voice.

 

“Ugh, I hate press conferences. I am certainly glad all you bastards abandoned me to do it alone.” Brian stopped and looked at Freddie and me, confusion in his face. “Guys?” he asked uncertainly.

 

Freddie let go of my shirt like it had burned him and went to Brian, pushing up against him like he did on stage. Brian smiled down at him with an unbearable sweetness and I sat down heavily. My headache had intensified with a vengeance and I buried my head in my arms.

 

“It’s nothing, love. Clowning around. Oh, and Roger’s being a bit of a prick.” Freddie’s voice was light with the forced shallowness of someone trying not to reveal how out of breath they were. I could feel the daggers his eyes were surely shooting at me.

 

“Well, I’m surprised he is even alive after last night.” Brian sounded more jovial than anyone who had been at that party really had a right to. Especially someone who had been drinking with Freddie most of the night.

 

“Fuck off, Brian,” I moaned into the table.

 

“Don’t talk to him that way.” Freddie snapped. “It’s your own fault if you feel like shit anyway.”

 

“Hmm, I guess I wasn’t distracted by all the asses I was signing and got a little carried away with the drinking,” I informed the table top, sardonically.

 

“Why, you little…” I sat up in time to see Freddie take a couple of menacing steps towards me.

 

“Stop fighting like little children.” John interrupted, irritation creeping into his voice. “And believe me, I know all about children fighting.” John stood up and grabbed Freddie’s arm. “I need to talk to you.” Freddie pulled his arm away but John caught it again. “Now.” His tone brooked no argument.

 

Brian sat down next to me as our bassist hauled off our singer. I inhaled involuntarily as the air he disturbed gusted past me. _He_ didn’t smell like vomit and stale beer. I detected something fresh and vegetal…and a faint overtone of Freddie’s cologne. My insides listed uncomfortably.

 

“What is that about?” Brian asked. I belatedly thought to be worried about what John might tell Freddie. I didn’t think he would divulge secrets that weren’t his to reveal. Most likely.

 

“No idea.”

 

Brian’s eyes followed the dark frontman out of the room. He sighed and pushed his hair out of his face. “I think I am in love.”

 

I let my head fall backward. “Oh, bloody fuck, not this again.”

 

Brian looked at me quizzically and then his lips quirked. “You look like hell, my friend,” he said with a laugh.

 

“Thank you.” I shot back, sarcastically. “That actually makes me feel so much better.”

 

He smiled and leaned towards me, his shirt gaping open slightly where he had neglected to fasten the top three buttons. I glimpsed the shadowed hollows under the pale curve of his collarbone. “But really. What were you and Freddie in a tiff about?”

 

“Nothing,” I hesitated. _Stop talking right now,_ my mind screamed at me. _What will bringing it up possibly solve?_ “You, I guess.” _Motherfucker._

“Me.” Brian’s voice was flat and he stared at me steadily. I swallowed, nervously. “What about me?”

 

“Brian, are you sure this relationship is a good idea? People are going to find out…” I tried to temper my misgivings with a note of platitude in my voice.

 

“I don’t care what people think,” Brian snapped, with a reflexive quickness that belied any doubt that he had been thinking about what people might think.

 

“Oh, really? What about the fans when they stop buying our albums? What about your parents?” I winced a little as the words came out of my mouth. _That’s it. No more serious discussions hung over._

 

Brian started a little at my words and the color drained from his face. “I…” he stammered. I peered at him over the top of my sunglasses, surprised at this reaction.

 

“Surely you’ve thought about what your parents’ reaction would be when they found out.” My voice climbed higher in disbelief.

 

“I didn’t really intend for them to find out,” he answered, slowly.

 

“Are you really that fucking naïve?” I exclaimed.

 

Brian shot a venomous look at me and my heart skipped a beat. “No. I mean…” Brian looked away, his brow knitted in confusion. “Well, maybe. I’ve just been so happy, you know?” I felt something shrivel up inside of me. “I guess I didn’t think out the long term consequences. My dad already isn’t happy with…” he trailed off and looked deep in thought.

 

I leaned back in my chair and became preoccupied with my own thoughts. _He’s been so happy that he hasn’t thought out the long term consequences? This is_ Brian _we are talking about._ I looked at him sidelong from behind my glasses, noting the worry in his clear hazel eyes, the way his finely delicate lips pursed just slightly and his long elegant hands spread out on the table, bracing himself. _God, Roggy, what kind of selfish prick are you for wanting to ruin this for him? He would have the same problems with_ you, _after all. At least with Freddie, it is all kinda…expected._ I felt myself to be lower than the lowest slimy worm, fighting to ruin things for this beautiful creature just because I was acting like a spoiled child who couldn’t get his own way.

 

“Brian…” I said hesitantly, reaching for his hand, unsure of what I wanted to say. _Brian, I am so sorry. You are one of my best friends. I love you and I just want you to be happy. I would prefer you to be happy with me and for me to be happy as well, but failing that, I just want you to be happy._

 

I opened my mouth to speak but was interrupted by Freddie storming back into the restaurant followed closely by John who looked half-concerned and half-aggravated.

 

“Right. Does anyone else want to interfere with my love life? Is anybody _else_ concerned that I am going to lose control and fuck Brian on stage?” Freddie stopped mid-tirade and focused on my hand laying on top of Brian’s. “What are you two doing?”

 

I jerked my hand away, feeling unaccountably guilty. “Nothing.”

 

Brian looked up at John. “What did you say to him?”

 

John pulled at the hem of his t-shirt and glanced around at the other patrons of the restaurant. We were managing to garner a lot of curious stares. “Brian, you and Freddie are going to have to start understanding that your…relationship isn’t occurring in isolation. You have to take into account the affect it is having…”

 

“Why did you say ‘relationship’ that way, Deaky?” Brian asked, eyes narrowed, and slowly got up from his chair.

 

“Like what?”

 

“You know exactly what I mean,” he said, his voice shaking.

 

I wearily fumbled in my pockets until I found an only slightly mangled cigarette and my lighter. I lit it and took a slow drag. _Fuck tea, this is what I needed._ “See, this is why you two getting together was a bad idea.” I drawled. “We are all at each other’s throats and going round in petty squabbles…” I was immediately cut short as even John lost his temper.

 

“That’s _it._ See if I try to help any of you fucked up bastards ever again…”

 

“Roger, you pathetic drunk, why don’t you just mind your own business. You were the one who started this all.”

 

 “You! Don’t go acting all high and mighty, Roger Meddows Taylor. We were all perfectly happy until you had to go and ruin everything.”

 

I leaned back and closed my eyes under the glare of three sets of infuriated eyes. _Great. Now everybody is pissed at me. Perfect._


	6. Chapter 6

**February 1993**

_Can anybody find me somebody to love?_

_Each morning I get up, I die a little._

_Can barely stand on my feet._

_Take a look in the mirror and cry, “Lord, what you're doing to me?!”_

 

“Fuck this.” Roger stepped back from the boxes of tapes he had been sorting and buried his head in his hands in frustration. John pulled off his headphones and paused the track he had been listening to, looking over at Roger in alarm. Roger kicked one of the boxes viciously, exclaiming, “There’s months’ worth of work here. Years’ maybe. It’s all in bits and pieces and even if we redo some of the old solo stuff, I’m not sure there is a whole album.”

 

“Freddie wanted us to keep on, Rog.” John said quietly, fiddling with some settings and pressing one side of the headphones to his ear to listen to the playback again. “One more album. That’s what he said. That’s what he kept on fighting and working for right up to the end.”

 

Something in John’s voice made Roger look at the other man in surprise. John seemed to be ignoring him completely and focusing on the soundboard, but you couldn’t always tell with the quiet man. He looked back down at the boxes. He had tried to forget about those last terrible days. Admittedly, there had been some fine days in the studio. Freddie had been truly determined to wringing the very last drops of passion and enjoyment from everything. They had all done their best to indulge him and act like nothing was wrong. Thinking about some of the things that had happened brought a smile to Roger’s face, but for the most part it was still all too raw.

 

Roger rubbed the side of his nose and asked himself, _why have you been trying not to think about the things Freddie said in those last days?_ Because of course, he had been the one to drag everything down to his studio and start the whole process of making the album up. To be honest, he’d been bored. There was only so much moping around being sad that he could do before he went completely stir crazy.

 

It was when the shit hit the fan with his accident that he had set his mind on getting to work, to have something to distract himself. Of course the police had found the wreck of the car and traced it to its owner, of course someone had leaked it to the media and of course they had had a field day with the news. “Queen Drummer faces emotional breakdown!” “Did Freddie Mercury know about latent mental illness in Roger Taylor’s background?” And of course some truly wild speculation involving alien abductions and government conspiracies. Trapped in his big house all alone, he couldn’t resist the temptation of sneaking out in his sunglasses and a dark wig and masochistically buying all the tabloids he could find to read up on all the rubbish they were writing about him.

 

One day he had woken up at two o’clock in the afternoon and realized he hadn’t spoken to anyone who didn’t work for him for an entire week. That evening he had sent people to clear out the recording studio and had called up John with a certain sense of trepidation. To his delight and relief, the bassist thought it was an excellent idea to start work on what they reflexively and nervously began calling “Freddie’s album.” Brian, however, had never responded to the message Roger left on his phone.

 

Despite the excitement when they first came together to work on the album, progress had ground to a halt. The problem was the sheer amount of recorded vocals. Surely later on in the process, they would be grateful for such depth of material to work with, but at the moment, it was simply overwhelming. They needed both an overriding vision of what the album should be and a meticulous hand who could contentedly worry away at the bits and pieces, nudging them into a coherent whole. The unspoken tension between the two of them was that they both realized they needed Brian. And Brian wasn’t there.

 

“Have you talked to Brian lately, John?” Roger tried to keep his voice casual. He had decided that for his own sanity, he would keep his interaction with the guitarist to a minimum. The last time they’d spoken was some awkward small talk at the subdued Christmas party John and Veronica had thrown.

 

John glanced at Roger out of the corner of his eye. He bit his lip and began to study the ceiling. “I was over there Monday. Why?”

 

“We need all three of us working on this.” There. Now it had been said, at least. He gestured at the ruin they had made of his studio in the few weeks they had been working. “Look at this mess. Brian would be in heaven working on this and nagging everyone on how the mixes should go just so.”

 

“Brian’s not ready yet.” John responded, a little too quickly. Roger was suspicious.

 

“Why? What happened?” he asked, carefully.

 

“Well, he was acting oddly when I was over there.” John stopped and examined his fingernails carefully. The drummer restlessly shifted his weight from on foot to the other.

 

“Oddly how?” he inquired.

 

John coughed and seemed to be searching for the right words. “Umm…I think he was a little drunk…but he always seems a little drunk when I visit these days.” John’s eyebrows drew together worriedly. _My God,_ Roger thought, _that doesn’t sound like Brian._ John continued, “He had decided that he didn’t want to see any of Freddie’s things anymore. You should see the estate, it’s a completely wreck. He got me to drive him to Garden Lodge, it was that or let him drive himself, he was that determined to go and he was in no shape to be driving.”

 

“But he hasn’t been to Garden Lodge since…” Roger felt a swelling sense of foreboding well up inside of him.

 

“Exactly.” John sighed. “He was supposed to get everything cleaned out so that Mary could live there. Freddie left it to her because Brian didn’t want it, not after everything. I am surprised he hasn’t sold the Windlesham house, actually.” John paused. “She’s being very patient with Brian, but…”

 

“What did he do when you got there?” John had a tendency to ramble once you got him actually talking and Roger wanted to keep him focused.

 

“I didn’t want to take him, Roger!” John interlaced and unlaced his hands, anxiously. “I tried to go to his mum’s instead, but he wasn’t _that_ drunk and he tried to get out of the car when he realized what I was doing. In the middle of traffic! Can you imagine him wandering around London after everything? The papers would make us all out to be mental.”

 

“John, it’s okay. Just tell me what happened,” Roger said, soothingly.

 

John took a deep breath. “Well, he was so withdrawn. Completely emotionless. It…it scared me a little to be honest. I don’t know what I expected him to do when he saw the house, basically untouched since the day they carried Freddie out of there,” John faltered to a stop and Roger could see him battling back emotion. Roger wondered how he would have reacted to seeing Garden Lodge again, dark and still. In those last days, the house had been a mad house, surrounded by paparazzi, filled with the friends and acquaintances that Freddie had wanted by his side always. It had been hard on Brian, to be constantly intruded on by people, but then so many things had been hard on Brian then. John recovered himself and went on, “I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that. Then he bagged up all of Freddie’s things. It took a while. He carried it all out to the dumpster and threw it out. I couldn’t talk him out of it. He went upstairs.

 

“I couldn’t bear for everything to be lost like that. And maybe Brian would change his mind. I got it all out of the dumpster and put it in the car. What didn’t fit, I put in the garden shed. Freddie would have been so pissed about that. I went to look for Brian and found him sleeping on the floor next to Freddie’s bed. The doctor has given him these sleeping pills…I…I think he takes too many.” John’s voice had faded to a whisper by the end of his story.

 

“Jesus Christ,” Roger swore softly. He thought about a certain promise with a twinge of shame. _I’ve been too selfish for too sodding long._ “I hadn’t realized he’d gotten so bad. I need to go over there more often. Maybe it would help…”

 

John sighed. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. “I really don’t have any idea what to do for him. You couldn’t do any worse than I have.” Roger colored slightly in embarrassment. John saw and half-shrugged awkwardly. “Well, maybe you could. I don’t blame you for not wanting to see him. It’s just…Jesus, Roger, it’s been over a year! He’s getting worse, if anything.”

 

The bassist turned away and returned to his absentminded fiddling with the soundboard. Roger sat down on the floor and pulled out a few of the tapes and stared blankly through them. It really wasn’t fair of him to have put this all on John. He tossed a tape into a pile that was accumulating he had mentally marked as ‘Things Brian needs to handle.’ “God, Deak, I’m sorry I’ve been such a prick.”

 

John cast him a look and drawled, “No worries, mate. I _have_ become accustomed.”

 

“Hey!” Roger protested. John smirked and they both returned to their work, a silence stretching between the two bandmates with only a faint tinge of uneasiness. Occasionally, John would request something and Roger would root around the studio until he either found it or added it to the growing to-do list.

 

“I think this has a lot of promise,” John commented and played a vocal track, a snippet of the chorus to a soft ballad. Roger listened, marveling at the fact that although he hadn’t been exactly avoiding it, the sound of Freddie’s voice still sometimes snuck up on him and brought a lump to his throat.

 

“Yeah, it’s good, John. Just a bit of guitar, acoustic, maybe.” Roger rubbed a hand over his face, and quirked his lips into a smile. “It’s like working on _Sheer Heart Attack_ , huh?”

 

John snorted, “Uh huh, almost.” He hit the pause button and leaned back in his chair. “Look, Rog. There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. I wanted to tell you and Brian together, but…”

 

A troubled sense of looming doom prickled the skin on the back of Roger’s neck. “What is it?”

 

“I’ve been thinking about…well, retiring, I suppose. I don’t know what your plans are musically, but I don’t want to do it anymore. I just can’t bring myself to care about it…not anymore.” John sounded grimly final.

 

Roger felt frozen in place. He stared blankly at John, trying to process what he had just been told. He thought about his newly made resolve to do more to support Brian. _But I thought that I would have John’s help!_ he wailed silently to himself. He thought that they could tour, together they could ease Brian back into the distraction and closure of playing again. _He’s running away, the fucking coward,_ he thought viciously and a bit uncharitably, but he didn’t care. He felt his temper peaking, already on edge from the emotional turmoil of the last year, as he burst out, “You can’t leave me to deal with this all by myself!”

 

John stared at him in disbelief and his own temper broke. “Oh, yes, you’ve been quite the martyr, Roger, dealing with everything,” he sputtered. John did not anger easily, but Roger had seen it happen a few times. He had never been the target before, though. “I’ve quite appreciated the way you’ve dealt with everything. Jumping Brian at the funeral, that was nice. Crashing your car when it became clear that he was still grieving for the bleedin’ love of his life and didn’t want your advances, that seemed like a mature way to handle it. Sulking at home for three months and letting me deal, yes, _deal_ with a man falling to pieces _all by myself_ ,” John’s voice cracked and he slammed his fist down on his leg in frustration. “All the while, I’ve been missing my friend like you can’t imagine. It makes me sick to even think of making music without him there on stage to my left. Doing this, making this album, is about all I can bear and I only countenance it now because I know how important it was to him.”

 

“Well, I suppose I haven’t been perfect,” Roger allowed.

 

“Perfect?!” John exploded.

 

Roger felt automatically defensive. “I’ve been doing my bloody best!” He sprang up to his feet and began to pace.

 

John took a few deep breathes through his nose, pressing his lips together hard enough to make them go white around the edges. His hands twitched and then smoothed down the front of his shirt in a visible effort to calm himself. He looked up at Roger from beneath his brows and asked, sardonically, “Do you know what my relationship with Freddie was?”

 

Roger gaped at him. He felt like someone that he had known for most of his life had just turned out to be someone completely unexpected. He also felt like a bit of a cock up, actually. “Relationship…what do you mean?” he queried, his head spinning with possible secrets the two of them could have kept from him.

 

John shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe how dense the other man was being. “Hmmph, my point exactly,” he snorted. “You two were both so busy fucking him that you never even really _looked_ at him and you definitely never looked at me.”

 

“Deaky…”

 

“Don’t ‘Deaky’ me,” John snapped, anger coloring his cheeks, and then he sighed. He glanced down at the soundboard and spread his hands across it. His anger melted away and left him looking just impossibly tired. “Freddie spent a lot of time talking with me. _Just_ talking. When I joined the band, I was an outsider, you know.” John’s eyes bored into him. “You and Brian were always so _in sync_ , I guess, musically and all the rest. It was quite intimidating. Freddie would take the time to ask how I was, he encouraged me to start writing, he would help me on songs when I was stuck. On _Hot Space_ , he said to me, ‘Ah, just fuck ‘em, darling, let’s do what _we_ want for a change.’” John stopped and smiled a little at the memory. Roger couldn’t find any words. He honestly had no idea about any of it. John looked off into the distance and chewed the side of his thumb introspectively. “It frightened him, I think, what and how much he felt for Brian. He didn’t always handle it in the best ways and when he was angry at himself, he always came to me. It…it felt good to be valued like that.”

 

“John, I’m so sorry. For everything. I didn’t know. God, I can be such a bastard sometimes,” Roger’s voice faltered and he reached out to touch John softly on the knee. “I miss him.” He tried to put everything he meant into those words, to make John understand from the simple phrase that had been said so many times before.

 

John placed his hand on Roger’s wrist and nodded. “Brian would say that Freddie was like the sun and we were all just orbiting him. Now that he’s gone, we’ve all flown off in every direction, careening off course.” John’s lips twisted into his familiar crooked smile.

 

A bark of laughter escaped Roger. He shook his head, “Fucking Brian.”

 

“Roger, what are you going to do about it?” John asked, hesitantly.

 

Roger didn’t have to ask what he meant. “Hell if I know. Fuck it up some more, most likely.”

 

John smiled a bit wider. “You know, you aren’t doing that bad of a job.”

 

“Yeah, good one. Tell me another,” he said, ruefully. He rolled his eyes

 

“No, honestly. I really can’t talk to him at all,” John said plaintively, shaking his head.

 

Roger looked at his friend, really looked at him. He noticed the grey that was threaded through his short hair and the worry lines between his eyebrows that seemed deeper lately. “God, John. I’m going to miss you when you go.”

 

“It’s not like I’m going to the moon or something.” John snorted through his nose and Roger smiled. “We will still see each other.”

 

“You know what I mean. It won’t be the same.” It seemed to Roger that the future was stretching out in front of him darkly. He never would have guessed that his life would be more in flux now than it ever had. _I’ve never been a big one for plans, but…it would be nice to have some idea what is going to happen._

 

“Well, I am not leaving tomorrow. I want to finish this. I just thought that you could use some warning. We’ll get Brian in the studio and everything will work out, I promise.” Roger wondered if John’s words sounded hollow to his own ears as well.

 

Roger nodded and turned away. He felt drained. “Yeah. Look, Deak…I think I want to give it a rest for today. I need to clear my head.”

 

“No worried, Rog. It will all be here tomorrow.”

 

Roger could feel John’s concerned eyes following him out of the studio. He stepped outside, clutching his arms around himself, and let the door shut behind him with a slightly louder crash than was necessary. He took a deep breath but the cold, humid winter air seemed to almost smother him. He sat down on the step and lit a cigarette. He was trying to smoke less these days but he felt like in the situation he deserved a little indulgence.

 

He thought about what John had told him. He thought about Freddie. _You would have thought the little ponce would have lost the ability to surprise me over a year after his death._ He shook his head and laughed a little even as his chest tightened and he blinked back welling eyes. He picked up a small pebble and tossed it from hand to hand, contemplatively. _I guess I kinda knew how close the two of them were. John was so upset on that last tour. Maybe he sensed something that went right over my dense head._

He sighed. _You know, Brian used to be_ my _friend. When did thing get so strained between us?_ Roger supposed that he knew the answer to that, but he wished things could at least go back to the way they were. He looked up at the grey skies that so neatly dovetailed with his own mood. He resolved to go over to see Brian as soon as possible. _We need to talk. Just talk. It seems like we have been doing everything but communicating lately._ Roger slowly got to his feet and started walking over to the main house, unable to keep a rising sense of optimism to slowly overtake him.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**November 1991**

_Too much love will kill you just as sure as none at all._

_It'll drain the power that's in you, make you plead and scream and crawl._

_And the pain will make you crazy._

_You're the victim of your crime._

 

I sat on a small bench in the back of Garden Lodge and looked at the last of the faded autumn flowers. The roses that Freddie and I had selected so carefully years ago had a few remaining leaves, dried and rattling in the gusty breeze. The same breeze whipped around me and raised goose pimples on the back of my neck that I barely felt. I thought about grief and how I could summon up nothing but a deep and penetrating numbness. I hadn’t even cried yet but little scenes kept flooding back to me. Like my fortieth birthday party when Roger had brought his kids and I had broken down crying in the pantry, upsetting the catering staff and bewildering poor Freddie.

 

_In the darkness that smells faintly of garlic, I hear the creaking turn of the door’s handle. I prop my hand against the door to prevent the intruder from seeing me like this, quite forgetting that the door opens outwards. I nearly tumble out at Freddie’s feet as he wrenches the door open and the sudden flood of light blinds me. I try to rub my face to hide the tears but my red and swollen eyes will probably still betray me._

_Freddie takes in the bizarre situation relatively quickly and kneels next to me, pulling me into his arms awkwardly. He smooths my hair back and asks, “Brian, dear, what’s wrong? Fuck, we’ve been through this already, you aren’t old. Forty is the new thirty, haven’t you heard, and anyway, I’m loads older, darling.” Freddie’s voice is falsely bright and jovial as it has been for the last couple months since our fight._

_“It’s not that, Fred!” I wail, wincing as the shrill timbre of my voice reaches my ears. “It’s just…Roger’s kids…” I hiccup from the crying and stumble to a halt._

_“Oh, yes, I agree. Right bastards, the bunch of them. Basic manners escape that man and, apparently, his progeny.” He waves a hand dramatically, easily indicting the deportment of toddlers._

_Freddie continues to murmur soothing noises and pet my hair. I think about little seven-year-old Felix who had pulled me aside at the beginning of the party and solemnly presented me with a drawing._

_“I drew this for your birthday,” he had explained._

_I looked at the picture. It seemed to portray me…at least it was either me or an ambulatory dust bunny…and a lion. “Why, thank you, Felix.”_

_He had nodded. “Dad says you like animals,” he clarified. “Anyway, you are my favorite uncle and lions are my favorite animal.”_

_My heart melted a little and I asked, “What about Uncle Freddie and Uncle John?”_

_“Oh, yes, they are my favorite too.” He rolled his eyes at my stupidity and tore off back into the living room, leaving me laughing behind him._

_I sigh as the memory fades. I look up into Freddie’s eyes, which are crinkled just a touch in the corners in concern. “It’s just…well, it’s just that…I want to be a father!” I say in a rush. I bury my face in my hands again, afraid to see what his expression is._

 

_“Oh, Brian…” Freddie’s breath seems to leave him in a rush and he sits down in front of me abruptly. I chance a glance up at him. His eyes dart to the side as he brings his hand up over his mouth in that painfully familiar nervous gesture. “Brian, we’ve been through this before. It just isn’t…practical.”_

_I am suddenly, unaccountably angry. Angry at him, angry at Roger’s adorable children, angry at the whole damn situation. I wonder when exactly I had become so bloody emotional. I used to be the logical one, the collected one. Now it seems as if the slightest thing will set me off into a storm of tears or an uncontrollable fit of rage. “Oh, because you’ve always been the practical one,” I all but snarl at him._

_Normally a statement like that said in that sort of tone would put Freddie on the defensive but today he just looks at me sadly. “I’ve had to become practical. You know that.”_

_His bluntness takes my breath away. I think about practicality, I think about all the things that I can’t have, for one reason or another, because of our relationship. Normally, I didn’t pause before reassuring myself that it was all worth it. Now I stare back at the man to whom I had dedicated so much of my life and find that I just can’t do it this time. I swallow hard and open my mouth to say something that I would most likely regret._

_Freddie cuts me off before I can get a word out. “We should get back to the party. Alright?” Freddie rubs his thumb across my cheekbone, wiping away the tight residue of my drying tears._

_I breathe deeply and try to rearrange my face into a pleasant mask. “Yeah, alright.”_

I blinked and focused on the crushed limestone path. The recent rain had eroded twisting rivulets through the gravel and into the underlying soil. Freddie and I would take slow walks out here, the meandering paths making the shortest of strolls seem like a trip through the countryside, until even that became too difficult. I inhaled sharply. There was a definite winter chill in the air and the sudden intake of cold air made me cough but the physical distraction could not prevent another memory catching me off-guard. The frost-edged air made me think of a different, fresher air, near the mountains and the making of the last album and how no-one dared let that word cross their lips—last. Final. I couldn’t have even borne to think the word then.

 

_I half-step, half-jump over the few stairs that lead down to the studio door. A damp, chilly breeze blowing in from over the lake stirs my hair and raises goose pimples on my arms. I shiver and hurry to open the blank, grey door. I had left Roger and Freddie together a couple of hours ago, working over some of Roger’s backing vocal tracks. I had expected Freddie back in our apartment in no more than half an hour. He had been working long hours and he tires so easily these days. As the clock had neared eleven, I grew worried and decided to just pop back, in case they needed help._

_The studio is deserted and the echo of my footsteps on the polished Formica floor sounds unnaturally loud. I strain to hear any hint of my bandmates’ presence. I haven’t considered that they might have gone out. Freddie had been having a good day, but I would have thought that he’d let me know, at least._

_My paranoia dissipates as I push open the door to the control room and find both Roger and Freddie sprawled over the sound board. Freddie is sleeping with his head resting on his folded arms and Roger is curled up on top of his shoulder, one arm cast with casual familiarity over the other man. I close the door softly behind me and watch the pair for a moment, reluctant to disturb the peacefulness of their rest._

_I can only see the back of Freddie’s head, but Roger’s face is upturned towards me. I think that he looks younger in his sleep, the lines that lately had been cropping up on all of our faces smoothed away. His delicate lips quirk in a transient smile at something in his dream state and I find myself reflexively smiling in return. He shifts closer to Freddie and buries his nose in his hair, breathing deeply and evenly._

_I must have made some sort of noise as I examined them, because as my gaze sweeps over his face, Roger’s eyes flutter open and met mine. For a breathless moment, we stare at each other, neither of us prepared to veil our expressions with any sort of shield or mask. His eyes seem to be all deep blue iris, they are so alien to the eyes I am accustomed to being lost in that they threaten to pull me down and swallow me under. I find my mouth falling open. I try to remember to breathe._

_Abruptly the moment is over and we both blink. Roger sits bolt upright and fumbles for his sunglasses which are tangled up in his hair, pulling the dark lenses down over his eyes like a wall of security. I find myself flushing without quite understanding why, I feel as though I have just accidently witnessed something immensely private and forbidden._

_Freddie stirs, sleepily, murmuring indistinct protests. Roger springs to his feet and turns away, scuffing his shoes on the carpet ruefully. Freddie raises his head and looks back and forth between us, blinking blearily._

_“Ah, darling, I’m sorry. We must have dozed off.” His voice is rough from overuse and cracks painfully until he clears it, his cough loud in the still room._

_“I came to check on you.” I clarify, unsure why I feel a need to explain myself. “I was worried.” I add with just a touch of reprimand, fueled by anger at the nagging sensation I have done something wrong. I glance over at Roger who is still standing with his back to me. Looking at him, I notice for the first time the strong lines of his muscles as he raises his arms over his head in a stretch. I feel my face warm with a deep flush. I glance at Freddie and am surprised to see him also looking embarrassed, fiddling with the edge of his shirt._

_“Let’s just get home. Rog, you okay?”_

_“Yeah, Fred. Get some sleep. Both of you. We have a busy day tomorrow,” Roger’s voice is nearly as rough as Freddie’s and he still does not turn and look at us._

 

The memory left me feeling unsettled and as the distant sound of cars stopping and doors closing on the road behind the garden wall reached me, I could not prevent my mind from turning to darker and even more verboten scenes. Denial was a powerful thing. The same denial that had gripped us all while recording _Innuendo_ had dragged me down into its depths a few months later. Taking things too far as always. Just a little bit too obsessive about things that peaked my interest, Freddie would have lightly teased.He must have thought that nothing was going to rattle me out of that persistent fog. Until he saw to it that I came face to face with the terrible truth.

 

_“What are you doing?” I am sitting on the floor outside of Freddie’s room, leaning against the wall and hugging my knees to my chest, trying to ignore a persistent ache in my lower back. Funny how it has become Freddie’s room even though I have always slept there too and am now spending nearly all my waking hours in the straight-backed chair at the bedside. Freddie ill and a mere shadow of himself can still outshine me as surely as the sun outshines the moon. I am like a ghost in my own house. I had been roused from my reverie by the sight of Phoebe climbing the stairs, a familiar bottle of pills clutched in his hand._

_His eyes slide away from mine guiltily, the way they always do when I have stumbled upon something that Freddie asked him to keep from me. I get to my feet, unreasonable anger surging in my chest with the hair-trigger response that always seems to come so easily these days. I see something flicker in Phoebe’s eyes and I realize my hands are clenched into fists. I try to relax._

_“Freddie asked me to bring all the Retrovir up to him,” he says uneasily, his glance shifting between me and Freddie’s door._

_“Why?” I demand, anger and suspicion melding together seamlessly. Freddie typically didn’t bother himself with the medicines, leaving it to me to deal with the doctors and the pills._

_“I didn’t ask, Brian.” Phoebe’s tone is gently scolding and I take a few deep breathes before turning away from him and opening the door to Freddie’s room. I stride in, trying to project a confidence I do not feel._

_“What are you doing with all the medicine, Fred?” I am proud of how steady my voice sounds._

_Freddie looks unblinkingly at Phoebe behind me and will not meet my gaze. He is propped up in bed with a tall stack of pillows and despite, or perhaps because of, his thinness he looks regal and aloof. “Phoebe, please take all those pills and flush them down the loo. I am not taking them anymore. I’ll just have the pain meds until I die.”_

_No-one moves. Eons pass, mountains crumble and I scarcely remember to breathe and then, finally, Freddie closes his eyes heavily and opens them again to meet mine full on. His exotic eyes are alien and distant and unforgiving. I tremble under his fearsome expression. The last word he said reverberates in my brain._

_A high-pitched, wild keening fills the room, sounding like a noise that would be made by a wounded animal. Distantly, I realize the sound is coming from my own throat. I fall forward onto the bed, half-landing on top of Freddie. I try to ignore the fragile-bird feeling of his body._

_“You can’t fucking die!” I wail. “You can’t leave me!” I pound my fists into the bed beside him, throwing a childish temper tantrum as my elaborate pretense falls in shards around me. I have spent so long convincing myself that he is getting better, so much effort on not seeing the signs he is getting worse, that now I have been forced to understand the truth, it hits me with almost physical pain._

_Phoebe rushes forward and starts to pull me off of Freddie. I shrug off his hands angrily. “Leave him,” Freddie snaps, in that commanding way that is still the same even now that his voice is thinner and weaker. Phoebe freezes in place and slowly lowers his hands. I cling to my love, my livelihood, my life as if through sheer physical force I can hold him here. My hands gradually release as I realized that this can never be._

_I sit up with deliberate care and watch as Freddie’s hand that had been tangled in my hair falls to the bed. I look at him, properly look, for possibly the first time in months and I see what I have been refusing to see for so long. His hand seems practically skeletal and nearly matches the ivory sheets. The weight has melted from him and even the difference between now and a few weeks ago is shocking._

_“You aren’t getting better, are you?” I do not recognize the sound of my own voice._

_“No, love,” he murmurs quietly. I turn my face away and press the heel of my hand to my cheekbone, hard enough to quell the stinging of tears in my eyes._

_When I have recovered myself, I say huskily, “What do we do now?”_

_He sighs and rests his hand on my thigh. I barely feel it. “We start saying goodbye.”_

 

I sighed and, unbidden, my thoughts turned to the last time I had been in that bedroom a few days ago. I had been trying my hardest to keep from remembering it but now I was seized with a sudden fear that I might start forgetting things, pieces of him, if I did not try to catalog every detail and dwell over every facet. I took a deep breath and dove into the memory, masochistically.

 

_The room is still and almost agonizingly quiet. Freddie has spent the day restlessly tossing, his labored breathing making me nearly crazy with sympathetic agony. He had been rambling semi-coherently about little stories from his childhood and from his early days in London. I had strained to catch every word. He had never shared any of it with me before and I feel a painful realization that now it is too late and I never really knew him properly at all. At this time though, he has lapsed into a fitful doze. Mary has gone out to catch some sleep as well. We both see the end nearing, so one or both of us stay here nearly round the clock as a steady stream of visitors cycles through._

_A candle sputters and goes out and as I raise my head to glance at it, Freddie’s eyes fluttered open and focus on mine, clear and lucid for the first time that day. We stare at each other for a moment and he is like a stranger._

_“Brian…I think it is time to…go.” His voice is reed-thin and the words come with strenuous effort. I listen carefully to hear him._

_“Freddie, no…”_

_“Brian, I need you to promise me something.” There is an urgency to him that is new and frightens me slightly._

_I gather both of his hands into mine. “Anything,” I say with feeling._

_“Take care of yourself. Be happy.” His hands tighten around mine with a fragile sort of tension._

_“No, Fred…” I feel painfully certain about what he is about to say._

_“Love again.”_

_The words hit me and I close my eyes. “But…”_

_“Take all the time you want but promise me that you will_ try _.”_

_“I can’t!” I plead._

_“Bri, please stop putting me up on some sort of fucking pedestal. I have_ never _been able to live up to your adoration of me. And yet…you’ve never stopped.” Freddie shakes his head and I can see the effort in that simple gesture._

_“That’s what love is!” I cry out._

_He wraps his thin fingers around my wrist in a grip that is surprisingly strong. “Promise me.”_

_I swallow back, hard. “I will never stop loving you.”_

_“Promise me!” Freddie says through his teeth, half-pulling his torso off the bed._

_“I promise,” I choke out, my voice hardly above a whisper._

_Freddie falls backward and closes his eyes, a peaceful smile on his face._

 

“Brian.” A gentle voice broke into my thoughts and had me looking up ruefully. I couldn’t have borne to continue with that particular memory much further anyway, I guess. Mary stood in front of me, smiling sadly. Her eyes were just a bit red and puffy and I managed to pull myself from my own morass of self-centeredness for long enough to feel a twinge of empathy.

 

“Brian, it’s time to go,” she urged softly.

 

“I don’t think that I can.” I could count on one hand the number of people I had seen since…well, in a while. The thought of all the people that would be at the funeral petrified me. I had no idea how to act around them or what to say.

 

Mary sat down heavily beside me. I shifted over a little to make room for her. We sat in silence for a while and I couldn’t quite muster up the energy to worry that the quiet was awkward. We had sat like this for hours together, at Freddie’s bedside. It amazed me now that we had never spent any of that time talking together. Not really talking.

 

“I miss him, you know,” she said and then she was dissolving into helpless sobs that seemed to be tearing out of her from the depths of her body. She buried her face in my shoulder and rocked back and forth in grief.

 

Something that was hard and icy deep inside of me shifted uncomfortably but did not crack. I stared at her dry-eyed for a moment before clumsily putting my arms around her.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said after a while as she gradually collected herself. She pulled away and looked at the mess she had left on my shirt in consternation. “Oh, Brian, I’m terribly sorry. I’ve gone and ruined your shirt.”

 

My lips twitched. “Eh, what’s the jacket for anyway?”

 

She smiled a wobbly smile back at me. “I don’t know what came over me. You looking so sad, I guess. I have been a mess lately. I tried so hard not to cry in front of Freddie, I suppose it is all coming out now.”

 

I nodded mutely and briefly considered telling her how I felt that I had frozen over the night Freddie died and both mine and other people’s emotions reached me delayed and garbled like transmissions between stars. I opened my mouth.

 

“We really do need to go. The place will most likely be crawling with media, it will take a while to get close.”

 

I closed my mouth and nodded again. I got up from the bench and tried to ignore the creaking in my knees as I offered a hand to Mary. I looked at the curve of her belly under her black jacket. “Where is your husband?”

 

“Oh, he’s in the car. I really hope that you don’t mind coming with us. I thought it would be better than going alone.” She looked up at me with the desperate need to mother _somebody_ as a distraction from this all.

 

I once again tried to arrange my face into a normal human expression as I answered her, “Oh, no, that’s fine.”

 

We walked together in silence around to the front of the house. I had found myself avoiding the inside of the house in the past few days, spending much of my time in the garden or driving alone, aimlessly. Everything in the house was haunted with memories of him. I couldn’t bear to disturb anything for fear of rousing those ghosts. I saw with surprise that the saloon car was parked in the drive by the front door.

 

I went habitually to the driver’s side door of the car. “Brian,” Mary said gently and put out her hand to restrain me. It was only then that I saw Terry in the driver’s seat and I stopped, confused.

 

“But…I let Terry go…”

 

“Yes, Brian. He wants to do this last thing for you,” she said and then her eyes slid away guiltily as I looked at her incredulously. “Well, for Freddie anyway. It’s the least you can do to indulge him.”

 

As I got into the car, I nervously thanked Terry. The truth was that I felt high-strung and jumpy and was glad that I didn’t have to drive myself. Mary’s husband, I could never quite remember his name, sat in the front passenger seat and uncomfortably offered his condolences, looking to Mary the whole time. I thanked him and he seemed relieved to be able to turn around and watch the road.

 

We pulled up to the crematorium. It was indeed teeming with reporters and photographers but there were also fans clutching flowers and pictures of Freddie and the band. I watched the crowd with a bit of apprehension. In the long hiatus from touring, I had forgotten what this was like and I had mostly avoided leaving Garden Lodge when the paparazzi were gathered there. Mary laid a hand on my arm and asked, “Ready?” I bit my lip and nodded.

 

The crowd was surprisingly respectful as we left the car, parting soundlessly in front of us. I caught my first glimpse of the hundreds of wreaths and bouquets that had been left and I looked at them in shock. Until now, my grief had been a very personal and private thing. I hadn’t spared a thought for all the others that were grieving as well. It should have made me feel less alone, but I was overwhelmed by a fresh wave of isolation.

 

I searched the crowd for someone I knew and my eyes landed on John and Veronica. Despite his well-fitting suit, Deaky looked rather rumpled and Veronica was fussing with his collar, trying to make it lay right. His eyes caught mine and I noticed the dark circles under his red-rimmed eyes and I thought of all the dark nights that he had slipped into Freddie’s room just as I had escaped for a few hours of respite.

 

He caught my arm and asked me seriously, “How are you, Brian?”

 

My lips twitched. “I’ve been better, Deak. How about you?”

 

“Yeah, I’ve been better.” He laughed, breathlessly. “Roger’s inside. Elton John and Dave Clark have come too. Jer’s been asking for you.”

 

I swallowed. I had been avoiding Freddie’s parents. What do you say to someone who had lost their son? “I’ll see her at the reception,” I said, carefully. John nodded, understandingly and patted my arm. We joined the crowd that was filing into the small chapel inside the crematorium.

 

I was taken off guard at the emotions that started to well up inside of me at the sight of the simple coffin topped by a single red rose. I mercilessly throttled them and managed to keep a passive solemnity on my face. I glanced across the room and saw Mary wasn’t fairing so well and was softly weeping into a pale lavender handkerchief.

 

I wondered why the sight of the coffin had affected me so when all the other emotions I had been waiting to feel were locked up in a kind of frozen lockbox. I suppose it was because that modest box made it all so real. As it had been, for the past few days I half-expected Freddie to pop out exclaiming that no-one even attempted to come find him hiding.

 

The service was beginning. I saw people exchange those worried looks they have when they find themselves in a strange church and aren’t quite sure when to stand and when to sit. Freddie’s parents in the front row were watching the priests with stricken faces and I knew that it had been important to him to please them in this, as least. I found my mind drifting again and wondered if I should be worried about my inability to focus.

 

I thought back on the last year. It was almost as if Freddie’s illness had been a physical force in our relationship that had slowly and maliciously dug a deep, dark ravine between us. A wall of awkwardly glancing away when he fumbled and dropped something. A barrier of pointedly not talking about it when I would abruptly bolt for the washroom to blink furiously, desperate for composure. And then, in the last days when the sheer mechanics of terminal disease ruthlessly stripped all the layers of mystery and coy romance from between us leaving nothing left of our love but the drudgery of duty, I had wanted to scream from the agony of it.

 

A sudden wave of sickly sweet relief rose up and threatened to pull me under as I stared blankly past and through the cloth draped casket. The droning chants from the exotic robed priests in a language I could not understand echoed in a cacophony in my head and drowned out any attempt at rational thought. _You are_ glad _he is finally gone, aren’t you, you sick, selfish bastard? Glad that you are finally free, no longer tied to the side of an invalid demanding your every waking hour._ Hard on the heels of the relief was black guilt and disgust and the memory of Freddie’s dark eyes, glinting at me mischievously under plush lashes every time I said something that I did not intend to be humorous but left him snorting with laughter in surprise. Bile rose in the back of my throat and I knew that I could not stay here another second.

 

I did not pause to worry about what people might think when they saw me leave. Those that knew about me and Freddie would come to their own, melodramatic conclusions and those that didn’t would talk. _Fuck it, they talk anyway._

I barely made it to the somewhat over-decorated and tissue-laden washroom in time. The ice inside of me fought against my revulsion at what I had thought and cracked a little, leaving me shaking. I threw open the door to one of the stalls and emptied the contents of my stomach, violently torn by wrenching heaves. I managed to be grateful that I had eaten little that day but had drank a lot of tea.

 

Between bouts of coughing, I heard someone open the door to the loo and walk inside but I was too preoccupied with twisting spasms to muster up much embarrassment. Slowly, the twisting urge receded and I straightened, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I turned my head to see who had witnessed me being sick.

 

Roger stood behind me in the door to the stall. He looked vaguely uncomfortable in his suit, a red scarf balled up in one hand, a disposable glass of water in the other.

 

“Umm,” He stammered. He licked his lips and looked away. I waited for him to speak, suddenly shy around a man I had known for nearly thirty years. He thrust the glass of water towards me. “You looked like you needed this…uh…that is, you sounded like…well…” he closed his mouth with a snap as he seemed to decide that talking wasn’t helping matters.

 

“Thank you,” I said sincerely. I felt a flush creep up my neck as I took a deep swig of the water, rinsing out the sour taste of vomit. “I think it might have been the incense or something.”

 

He nodded, staring at me strangely in a daze. After the silence stretched on a little too long, he recovered himself with a start and shook his head. “Brian, don’t be ridiculous. Or at least more ridiculous than normal. We both know that…” he trailed off and cocked his head slightly to the side as he started staring at me again. I felt my blush growing in intensity as I was caught up in the concentration of his gaze.

 

I looked into his deep blue eyes, eyes that had always seemed impossibly large in his cherubic face. I felt as if I was watching myself from outside my body, I was dreadfully numb. Moving like a puppet being controlled by some alien power, I set the glass down on the floor and stood up. Roger straightened and backed away, lowering his eyes guiltily.

 

I leaned forward and kissed him.

 

A feeling of nearly hysterical disbelief swept over me and was gone before I even had a chance to do more than half-start in incredulous astonishment. At first the kiss was hesitant. I heard Roger’s sharp intake of breath as my lips just barely grazed against his. I felt the heat rising from his skin. My insides lurched and an arousal that I had not felt for many long months stirred lazily.

 

In the beginning, the excitation was the sheer, visceral shock at kissing someone strange, someone who was not the one whose lips and tongue and moans I knew as well as my own. Then, slowly, as the kiss deepened, the taste of him began to register. He tasted sweet, like candy, like Brighton rock, laced with the overriding smokiness of tobacco. That taste would normally be off-putting but it fit him, somehow.

 

He was motionless for the space of a few seconds and then he responded to me, softly but then with increasing force as his tongue pushed against mine and plunged into my mouth, our lips crushed together. He brought up one of his hands and it ghosted along the surface of my cheek before he buried it in the dark mass of my hair. I could not hold back a low moan as my arousal ran in shivers just below the surface of my skin, starting in the pit of my belly and radiating outward. He pulled back his tongue and I followed, overwhelmed once more by the strange deliciousness of his mouth. My cock twitched and then began to swell in a slow but insistent, hot rush of blood.

 

We both caught our breath by inhaling raggedly through our noses. I opened my eyes and some indistinct shape in the periphery of my vision captured my attention. I flicked my gaze over to the corner of the room and saw a familiar slim, dark-haired man, his arms crossed and one toe tapping impatiently. As I watched, dark red, nearly black blood began to well up from the left side of his chest, soaking through his shirt and then beginning to drip down the snow white fabric of his shirtfront.

 

I threw myself back from Roger with a cry. I whipped my head around but there was nothing there except a rubbish bin and a paper towel dispenser.

 

_Brian, you are going fucking crazy._

 

I glanced back at Roger. He was standing, shell-shocked, his eyes wide and pinned on me with his fingertips pressed to his lips as if I had burned him. I could still taste him on my tongue. _Oh, God, I just kissed_ Roger. As a new wave of nausea threatened to swamp me and force me back into the stall, I managed to think, _what have I done?_

I whirled away. I couldn’t bear to meet his eyes a second longer. The slam of the bathroom stall door closing resounded and echoed in the small room, but over the crash I could still hear the sound of two voices crying out, “Brian!”


	8. Chapter 8

**April 1993**

_Every day - I try and I try and I try - but everybody wants to put me down._

Roger pulled his car up to the dark mansion and tried to dispel a vague sense of foreboding that was making his skin feel tight and prickly. He kept glancing over his shoulder, certain he saw shifting black shapes out of the corner of eye. _Come on,_ he informed himself sternly, _it’s just Freddie and Brian’s place, you’ve been here loads of times. Nothing’s changed._ But as he tried not to notice the climbing roses gone wild and sprawling around the entryway or the rutted and uneven gravel in the drive, he couldn’t help but suspect that everything had changed.

 

He turned the car off and leaned back into the seat as the sudden silence enveloped him. He fumbled with the keys for a moment before removing them and reached for the door handle. He was still becoming familiar with the coupe. It was a good car, but it was nothing like the Alfa had been and as anger joined the disquiet, he wished that he hadn’t chosen just then to remember the tragic end the other car had met. Roger vowed that he was done with all that stupid shit, all the limbo of not knowing where he stood. _John’s right. It’s been nearly a year and a half. We can’t go on like this._

 

The big house showed few signs of life. He pressed his forehead against the driver’s side window and examined it carefully. A faint light glowed in one of the upstairs windows between heavy drapes that hung slightly askew and a black and white cat observed him impassively from the wide bay window nearest his car. He had gone round with himself on whether it was better to come unannounced or call first, eventually deciding on the former as it would give Brian less of a chance to avoid him. But now, facing the grimly silent house, he wished that he had some sort of assurance that he would be welcomed.

 

He sighed and pushed open the door. It swung away silently and Roger got out of the car clumsily, standing there, hesitant. A breeze that still held some hint of winter chill ruffled his hair and made him clutch his jacket closer. He had an uneasy sensation of being watched. Shaking his head to clear it of such nonsense, Roger strode purposefully to the front door and rang the bell. He strained to hear any sort of response from within the house but everything was as still as a dreamless sleep.

 

He stared at the door reproachfully as if it was somehow responsible and pressed the doorbell button again. After a few long moments of stillness, he muttered, “Of all the stubborn, pig-headed…” and kicked at the door in frustration. There was still no sound and the door seemed unmoved by his outburst. Finally, he changed tactics and tried pounding his fist against the door. “Come on, Brian. I know you’re in there. Just open the fucking door!”

 

He had resorted to name calling when the door was finally, unceremoniously yanked open. Off-balance, Roger staggered forward and nearly crashed into Brian who reached out to steady him reflexively, holding him at a cautious arm’s length. “What are you doing here?” Brian looked livid. “I wasn’t expecting anyone!”

 

“Well, I wasn’t about to call and have you tell me not to come. We have been avoiding each other too long.” Roger felt like growling in frustration. The encounter wasn’t yet five minutes old and it was already going badly. He took a deep breath and grabbed Brian’s forearms to ground himself. The guitarist’s skin felt feverishly hot and papery and it seemed to Roger as though he could snap the arms like brittle bird’s bones, there was no muscle holding them together.

 

Roger looked at Brian in surprise. His eyes were glassy and slightly unfocused. “My God, Brian,” he breathed. Brian released Roger and attempted to smooth down the front of his shirt. He looked aimlessly around the entryway for moment before apparently remembering Roger still standing half over the threshold. He blinked and then reached out to try to shut the door in Roger’s face. Roger moved instinctually and managed to wedge most of his body between the door and its frame. He winced as the heavy oak bit into him but at least Brian didn’t have much force behind the closing of the door. Roger pushed himself nearly all of the way inside and stood there panting. “Brian, don’t be ridiculous, I only came to talk,” he exclaimed, exasperated.

 

“I don’t want to talk to you.” Brian’s voice was devoid of inflection.

 

“Well, apparently you don’t want to do a lot of things that you should be doing right now.” As he spoke the words, he began to notice that he had subconsciously picked up a lot about Brian’s state, things he was only now beginning to consciously register. Brian’s hair was a complete and utter disaster, somehow managing to be simultaneously lank as well as a tangled rat’s nest of frizz. He had dark, puffy circles under his eyes and he smelled vaguely like alcohol. His clothes were impossibly rumpled and hung from his tall frame loosely

 

“If you’ve come to lecture me like John, I don’t want to hear it.” Brian tried to push him back but stumbled a little and caught himself, winded, on the bannister of the stairs. Seeing him so clumsy made Roger unaccountably angry and he caught Brian’s wrist and pulled him upright. Brian’s eyes wandered across his gaze accidently and they were bloodshot and wide, his pupils narrowed to pinpricks.

 

“I don’t want to lecture you.” Roger winced at the harsh note of scolding in his own voice. “Hell, John doesn’t want to lecture you either. Is it so hard to believe that we care about you and want to help you?”

 

“I can take care of myself,” Brian stated against all available evidence.

 

Roger couldn’t help a disbelieving bark of laughter. “Oh, yes, I can tell. When was the last time you ate, Brian? Changed your clothes? Left your bedroom?”

 

“I haven’t been hungry…I’ve been going out, sometimes…” Brian trailed off and his eyes darted to the door. _Probably contemplating how to get me out of it._ He took a deep breath and turned to gaze steadily at a patch of air somewhere in the vicinity of Roger’s left ear. “You said you wanted to talk.” Brian pushed his hand into his hair and had to work to get it through the dense, tangled mat. “So talk.” He crossed his arms and shut his mouth with a snap.

 

Roger could feel his cheeks coloring. Now that he was on the spot, he had no idea what to say. _Shit, I should have rehearsed something._ He let go of Brian’s wrist and watched him, half-afraid that he was about to bolt. He felt of tinge of guilt, wondering if his bandmate would be in such a state if things had happened differently between them. _For example, not bloody happened at all, that would have been nice. At least I’m off the hook for starting that one._ “Brian, just what exactly are we doing? Other than fighting and giving you a near psychotic breakdown?”

 

Brian twitched. “I’m not the one driving my car into trees on an empty road outside of Mytchett.” Something that might have been a smile flickered across his face and then disappeared.

 

“Alright, for the last time, there was a fox and this great, big, bloody lorry…” he stopped as he saw Brian’s gaze wander away again. “Brian?”

 

“I don’t know what we are doing, Roger. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.” Brian pressed the palms of his hands against his face and slowly sunk down to sit on the bottom step. The wide, sweeping staircase was half-swallowed in the gloom and Brian looked more than a little lost and small against the dramatic backdrop. Roger saw two pairs of eyes glowing green and watching them from the upper floor.

 

He took a step forward. “Brian, you need to talk to someone. Not me. Not John. Somebody objective.”

 

“I’ve been talking to my mum about things, you know,” Brian mumbled.

 

Roger held his breath. Brian’s mum was a sensible woman about most things, but ever since his father had died, Brian seemed very sensitive to advice his mother gave that was contrary to what he thought his dad would have said. Roger thought about the things in Brian’s life that his father had not approved. Freddie was one, the band was another and Roger assumed he would have been no different. And Brian seemed to want to make up for lost time in pleasing his father.

 

“What did she say?” he asked, cautiously.

 

“She wants to know what we are doing also.” Brian dropped his hands into his lap and looked up at the ceiling. Roger thought of the rather ostentatious chandelier hanging above them and how Freddie had adored it and Brian had loathed it. Freddie had claimed that Brian would do anything he could to sabotage the piece and had set Phoebe to guard it like a hawk. Roger smiled a little at the memory, but if Brian was thinking the same thing, there was no sign of it on his face.

 

“I guess that’s just the question of the fucking century. We kissed at the funeral.” Roger ground his teeth together as he saw Brian wince and turn away. He pressed on. “Since then, you’ve been alternating avoiding me with calling me up to spend time alone together that invariably leads to the beginnings of ‘heavy petting.” Roger nearly spat the words, angry that they had been reduced to terms better left back in school. “As far as I can tell, we are just practicing ways to make each other miserable, but feel free to correct me.”

 

“You made me do those things, Roger. I didn’t want to.” There was a note of panic in Brian’s voice, one that Roger chose to ignore as his temper peaked. He was sick and tired of Brian playing the martyr and this time he didn’t deserve to.

 

“Now you listen and you listen good, Brian. I never made you do anything. _You_ were the one who kissed _me_ and you are going to have to come to terms with that one of these days,” Roger shot back and closed half the distance between them with heavy steps.

 

Brian gaped up at him. They stared at each other for a long moment. _C’mon Brian, give me something here. You’ve been living in denial for way too fucking long._ Brian opened his mouth and for a second, Roger thought he was going to speak but then he closed his mouth with a quiet huff. He got to his feet with a quickness that surprised the other man and then turned away. Brian stalked into the shadowy depths of the house, the darkness enveloping his gaunt form in seconds. Roger hesitated for a moment and then pushed his hands through his hair and growled in frustration. He followed Brian into the living room.

 

As he flicked on the lights along the way, he began to see what John had meant about the condition of the house. Freddie had been perhaps a tad over fond of knickknacks, or valuable antiques, as he had termed them. Some of the curio cabinets and sideboards were swept clean, a clutter of items laying forlornly beneath them on the floor, and some were undisturbed, covered in a thick layer of dust. Nothing looked like it had been cleaned in ages and the cobwebs clinging to the light fixtures caused everything to be cast in a shuddering, eerie glow. Roger felt the terrible sense of foreboding again. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to go into the other room and confront Brian but he sure as hell didn’t want to go back to his own dark and empty (albeit cleaner) big house.

 

A soft gleam caught his eye in the dim light of the hallway lamp. He knelt and lightly smoothed the tip of one finger over the well-proportioned curve of a vase, its creamy surface only marred by a large, jagged crack running the length of it. He carefully traced the crack and stopped as his finger came to rest on the edge of a chip blemishing the delicate lip. A pattern of blossoms picked out in gold had cast the glint that had caught his eye. He quirked his lips in bemusement as he studied the vase he recognized all too easily.

 

_Brian looks dubiously at the urn is his hands, bearing a large and ornate dragon twisted with a phoenix. He turns it over and peers at the bottom while the anxious shop owner looks on, saying, “I don’t know, Roger. They all look the same to me. Which do you think Freddie would like?”_

_I shrug and cast an eye around the store. “It isn’t my job to pick out your present for Fred’s birthday. I already got him the book.”_

_“I would hardly call that a book. It is basically just porn.” Brian gestures with the urn, causing the owner to hover a bit more forcefully._

_“Hey! It is antique, rare and expensive porn. So that makes it pretty much art…” I trail off as I spot something half-hidden in a cabinet by the register. “Hey, Brian, come look at this.”_

_Brian follows me and then carefully lifts the small, elegant vase to hold it up to the light. The porcelain is so delicate that the light seems to glow through it, giving the blossoms painted on the surface a kind of inner fire. Brian is looking at the piece with a distant look on his face, a look that makes something lurch uncomfortably inside of me. He looks up and smiles warmly, “What a great find. It reminds me of spring in Japan. It’s lovely.” Our eyes hold a moment too long and then Brian looks down and flushes._

Roger stood up too quickly and a black haze swam across his vision. He resisted the urge to kick something and set out again to find Brian. _It shouldn’t matter to you what he does with Freddie’s stuff. Since when did you get so sentimental, anyway?_ Roger shook his head to clear it and abruptly found Brian, sitting in the large parlor off of the kitchen.

 

Roger watched the other man, who did little to acknowledge his company. The clutter and destruction was even worse in this room and Roger wondered how Brian managed to get in without leaving a visible trail.

 

Brian slowly leaned down and picked up a shattered picture frame from the floor. He brushed the shards of glass off of its surface, heedless of the risk of cuts and stared at the photo. Roger looked down at it and even upside-down and bearing a gash through one side, he knew what picture it was. Two men, with rock star pretensions, wearing stupid hats and expressions and far too impressed with their own sense of humor.

 

Brian lightly traced an outline around the image of Roger and Freddie. “Can I ask you a question?” Roger couldn’t begin to guess at the other man’s tone.

 

“Of course,” he responded, cautiously.

 

“Did you ever sleep with Freddie?” Brian asked, flatly.

 

“What?!” Roger exclaimed. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting Brian to ask, but it definitely wasn’t that.

 

“You heard me. Did you ever fuck my boyfriend? Our bandmate?” A core of cold steel had crept into Brian voice and Roger knew that this was going to end badly

 

“Brian…” Roger searched for some way out of this, some way to assuage Brian’s suspicions. _Lie to him,_ his conscience screamed at him, _for the love of God, if you ever want things to turn around, you will lie to him right now._ As his mouth worked and his brain came up short, his oldest friend and bandmate slowly closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his temple.

 

“God, Roger.” Brian was breathless with disbelief. “Were you ever going to tell me? Was _he_ ever going to tell me?”

 

 _Hell, no._ “Of course we were. The time was never right.” _Freddie swore me to secrecy as soon as he had an inkling that the thing between the two of you was for real. He knew your tendency to bolt._ He moved without thinking and sat on the sofa next to Brian. Brian shifted to the other end without looking at him.

“Never right.” Brian’s voice was emotionless.

 

“Brian, it was eons ago.” Roger placated, thinking he was probably in real trouble now. “It started before you and Freddie were even…”

 

“Started?” Roger had not been aware that it was even possible for eyebrows to climb that high. “And exactly when did it _end_?” he spat and finally looked Roger full in the face.

 

The memory was fresh and vivid, never mind that the particular scene had not crossed his mind in years. Brian’s eyes darkened and became those out of the past.

_Freddie turns in my arms and sighs, prettily, gazing up at me with those foreign, almond-shaped eyes. “Brian and I are buying a house together, isn’t that grand? A whole estate, where he can have all his furry wildlife running about and I can decorate…Roger, you must come over as soon as it is presentable.”_

_I shift uncomfortably. “Freddie, I am not sure this is appropriate to be discussing while you are naked and leaving a wet spot in my bed.”_

_A dark cloud passes over his face, as close to a guilty expression as I have ever seen him manifest. There is an edge to his voice when he says, “You know, Brian finds monogamy so bloody easy, darling.”_

Roger opened his mouth and then shut it, unable to speak. Brian was watching him, incredulous, waiting for his reply. He stood up and began to pace restlessly. Roger closed his eyes.

_I gape back at him, unsure of what response is appropriate. “Freddie, you love him,” I stumble to a halt, my voice breaking on the words. “I know that you know what it would do to him if he found out…you hide—us—so carefully. How can you do this?”_

_“He is your friend, Roggie dear,” Freddie forces out through gritted teeth. “How do you do it?”_

_I inhale sharply and feel the pit of my stomach falling away. The truth is I have no fucking clue. And Freddie doesn’t know the half of it._

_“We need to end this.” I pull away from him and half sit up._

_Freddie laughs, unease causing his eyes to slid away from mine. “Oh, now you’re some kind of saint, huh? What brought on this fit of conscience?”_

_“Freddie…”_

_He places his hand against my naked chest and his long nails, carefully buffed but no longer lacquered, bite into my skin. He pushes me down to the bed and straddles me languorously. My body, which by all rights should be properly exhausted, betrays me and arousal unwinds through me like lightning, descending from the base of my skull and rising from my groin until it meets somewhere in the pit of my stomach. I arch against him and divulge exactly the depth of my commitment to become a better man._

_Freddie smiles a perfectly wicked smile and leans down, inch by agonizing inch, until our bodies are pressed together and whispers into my hair, “What Brian doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” He licks the curve of my ear. “Besides, only a masochist could resist fucking something as gorgeous as you. And I am no masochist.”_

Roger blinked and inhaled painfully as the memory left him shaken. “It didn’t end.”

 

Roger could see it. He could see the rage rising in Brian’s eyes and he could see the color peaking in his pale face. Brian’s hand twitched and Roger braced himself. And then it was as if the other man simply shut down the unwanted emotions, his expression shuttered and he stepped back. _Goddamn it, Brian,_ Roger thought, fiercely. _This has got to stop._

Roger got up heavily. Brian retreated a few more steps and half-turned away. Roger caught his wrist and held him back for a moment before the other man shook him off, hissing, “Don’t touch me!”

 

Roger was relentless and grabbed at his arm again. After a brief struggle during which Roger was shocked at the state of Brian’s strength, Roger ended up holding on to Brian by his shoulders. He could feel the heat rising off of the guitarist, smell the heady musk of his sweat. He wanted to pin him down and beat some sense into his stubborn head, he wanted to pin him down and grind their bodies together, he wanted to be tangled up in Brian’s lips and tongue and hair and shed clothing.

 

“What does that make you feel, Brian?” Roger yelled in his face, forcing down his desire mercilessly. “Does it make you angry?” he searched his face for some reaction, any reaction.

 

“Of course it makes me angry!” The heat in Brian’s voice didn’t quite make it to his eyes.

 

“Then do something about it!” Roger shook him, his teeth grinding agonizingly. “You can’t keep bottling everything up like this.”

 

“What’s done is done, Roger. What the hell is it going to help to scream and sigh and carry on?” Brian threw up his hands and then pulled away again and started walking from the room. _Running away. Like usual._

 

“You could say the same damn thing about how you are acting about Freddie. He’s dead, Brian. It’s been over a fucking year. Look at you!”

 

Brian stopped dead in his tracks and looked back at Roger over his shoulder. What little blood had colored his cheeks quickly drained away. In the deadly silence that followed, Roger had time to start to regret what he had said, although he kept his chin up defiantly to Brian’s face. Brian whirled away from the blond and pounded a fist against the wall in frustration. Roger winced.

 

“I can’t do this,” he wailed, his forehead joining his fist against the wall with a thump. “I can’t…”

 

“We can work through it. Together.” Roger felt remorse coursing through him along with sickly sweet pity as he watched the pathetic figure in the corner.

 

“It’s too fucking hard.”

 

“God, Brian, I have fucked up royally, but I will try harder. I love you so much, you have no idea.”

 

Brian spun around, his eyebrows snapping together. Roger took a step away from the other man, involuntarily. He had never before imagined being afraid of _Brian_ of all people, but then he had never loomed quite so tall and angrily over Roger either.

 

“Why should I even try to do this, Roger? Huh? Why should I even believe anything you say to me, all your lovely declarations of _love_?” Brian’s voice was quiet but filled with an intense sort of venom that made Roger shrink away. Brian followed and his eyes did not look quite sane. “Your fuck toy is gone now…and you’ve decided his boyfriend would make a good replacement. God, you disgust me, you dirty little slut.”

 

He looked down his nose at Roger with such merciless contempt in his face as he passed easy judgment on the drummer that it took Roger’s breath away. He thought of all the years he had spent in agony, wanting Brian silently from afar as the tall guitarist had lived out his fairytale pretense in deep oblivion to it all. _It isn’t Brian’s fault. It isn’t anybody’s fault._ That last wisp of rationality drifted into and out of his mind before he had a chance to even register it.

 

There was a roaring in his ears. Without quite realizing what he was doing, Roger clenched his hand into a tight fist. He suddenly, clearly understood how Brian could make Freddie so crazy and felt hotly sympathetic towards the singer. “You shut your mouth, Brian Harold May,” he growled.

 

“Oh? You can’t tell me what to do.”

 

_Brian leans towards me, his eyes slightly vacant. My mind starts to go blank in panic as I realize that after all these years, it is finally happening, Brian is about to kiss me and all I can do is stand there. Only during the kiss do I think what a monumentally bad idea it is._

_Freddie grips my arm, stronger than I thought possible and says, urgently, “I want you to promise me something.”_

_Brian pauses and then deliberately licks his lips and speaks, words that pierce my carefully constructed composure. “I don’t know if I will ever be able to give you the things that you want,” his voice breaks and he looks back at me, stricken._

“I am sorry that I ever kissed you.” Brian’s words pierced through the clambering voices in his head like a dull knife.

 

Roger’s hand smacked Brian across the face before he even had time to realize his arm was moving. The slap rang out unbelievably loud in the still house and for a moment no-one dared to breath. Roger had several things rush into his conscience at once, the sharp, hot sting of his palm, the blossoming of a red hand print on Brian’s cheek and the wide, shocked depths of his hazel eyes.

 

He seemed to snap back into his body with a rush of blood to his brain and he staggered a step backward as he realized what he had done. Brian’s eyes never left his as the other man raised his hand achingly slowly and pressed it to the side of his face. He blinked and an icy wall came down over his expression, effectively closing the world out.

 

Brian slowly turned away and walked like a man in a trance. Roger opened his mouth to call after him but thought better of it and backed away until his back hit the wall. He slid down the wall as Brian disappeared into the darkened house. Wrapping his arms around himself, he finally realized just how cold it was inside the estate and he started to shiver. Distantly, he heard a door slam.

 

He had heard about how if all the oxygen in the atmosphere disappeared for just a few seconds that the sky would turn black, the oceans would bleed off into space and buildings would all crumble and fall. In short, the world would end. As he buried his head into his knees, he found it sickly funny that none of that seemed to be happening.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**November 1991**

_Yes, too much love will kill you, and you won't understand why._

_You'd give your life, you'd sell your soul, but here it comes again._

 

 

 

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and sighed, fiddling with my tie yet again. My eyes looked tired and bloodshot. I supposed I hadn’t been sleeping much these past few weeks. I tried the sunglasses once more and ran a frustrated hand through my hair. _The real question is do I want to look like an ass or a mess?_

 

“Roger?” A voice called up the stairs. “Are you almost ready? We don’t want to be late!”

 

“Yeah! Just a second!” I yelled back and yanked the glasses off and shoved them in my shirt pocket. _Fuck it_ , I growled to myself, _let them think what they want._

I turned and found Dominique leaning against the frame of the door to the bedroom, a concerned look on her face. “Are you sure that you want us to go with you? I don’t want to make things anymore awkward than they have to be.”

 

“Felix wants to go, you said.”

 

“Yeah, and so of course Rory does too…she’s at that stage. And you shouldn’t have to handle the children alone…” Dom paused and glanced away from me. Our relationship was still stormy, but on a good day it was amazing how far we had come from the screaming matches we used to get into after Rory was born. She took a breath and smiled at me sardonically, “Believe it or not, Rog, I really do understand what you must be going through and I want to help make it as easy as possible.”

 

I reached out and brushed some hair from her face. “Thank you,” I said, sincerely. “Ah, hell, you might as well come. John will have Veronica, obviously, and I’d rather not show up all alone. Do I look alright?”

 

She fiddled with the tuck of my shirt for a moment. “He would have loved to see you all dressed up for him.”

 

I swallowed thickly and decided that perhaps wearing the sunglasses would be best after all. I ducked my head and she politely turned away and started down the stairs. I followed slowly, thinking that it was hardly a good sign if I could barely hold it together here in my own home. I found the kids waiting somberly in the front room, Felix looking far too grown up for his eleven years in his little suit and Rory doing her best not to fidget with her dress.

 

Rory got up when she saw us and came over to take my hand. Her little hands could only really grab a couple fingers but the gesture had me blinking back hard again. I wondered what Dom had told her about today and about Uncle Freddie. She had had some goldfish die, but nothing more than that. I felt a surge of gratefulness towards Dom. I knew that I couldn’t have managed that conversation.

 

The car was waiting for us with a driver I vaguely recognized from the long ago days of touring. It was odd how thoroughly I had gotten out of the habit of being driven everywhere except for the odd awards show or gala. I was glad again that Dom had arranged this.

 

Sitting in the car, I couldn’t help but remember another car ride, that one with me in the driver’s seat, headed over to visit Freddie a few days ago. We had all felt that the weeks left for him had long since turned into mere days and were maybe now inching towards only hours. I had only a few blocks to go until I got to the house when the shrill ring of the car phone had shattered the still of the evening.

 

I was sure that the rough and cracked sound of Phoebe’s voice would be engrained on my memory until I died.

 

_“You shouldn’t bother coming, Roger.” There is a finality in his voice that makes me catch my breath and pull the car to the side of the road a bit too roughly._

 

_I don’t have to ask what had happened. I open my mouth to speak but find that I can’t form any words. I clear my throat and try again. “Brian?”_

_“I think he’s in shock. I’ve called his mother…I am not sure if it would be best for him to be left alone though. I’m worried, Rog.”_

I didn’t remember the rest of the conversation. I did remember that turning that car around and driving back home was one of the most painful things I have had to do. I couldn’t have faced my big empty house all alone so I had called John. He had seemed relieved to hear from me and graciously invited me over. We spent the night reminiscing over little funny Freddie stories and getting drunk on Deaky’s impressive whiskey collection. In retrospect, it had been a better way to say goodbye than this sad and formal affair would be.

 

The car pulled up to the front of the building to drop us off and I caught my first glimpse of the hundreds of flowers and stuffed animals piled up against the side of the building. For the first time, it felt real. This was Freddie’s _funeral_ we were attending, that was it, game over, no more second chances. I suddenly did not want to talk to any of the people gathered outside. There were too many faces that I recognized, old managers, techs and roadies and even a few people from way back in our university days. I wondered briefly who thought to invite them all. The worst was Elton John, standing with an entourage and staring at the flowers with a stricken, there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I look on his face.

 

 “I can’t do this,” I said with a shudder. The children looked up at me worriedly and I grimaced. “I can’t make small talk with these people.”

 

Dominique squeezed my shoulder. “Then don’t,” she said with a shrug.

 

I remembered how her disregard for social niceties was one of the things that attracted me to her in the first place. I spotted a side entrance and pulled Dom and the children towards it. I glanced over my shoulder as we slipped inside and saw John, standing slightly apart from a group of somberly dressed people, watching us go inside. He nodded very slightly as I colored in embarrassment and waved me on.

 

We seemed to wait forever for the service to start. The children were remarkably well-behaved, contenting themselves with watching the people filing in and looking at the decorations of the chapel. A large stained glass window threw big splashes of crimson and deep blue over the crowd, glowing brightly despite the overcast skies outside.

 

Music started and the chapel began to fill in earnest. A few people came over to talk to me, I vaguely remembered Mary and Veronica and possibly John Reid but for the life of me, I couldn’t recall anything I said to them. Then a hush fell over the crowd as the priests lit incense and began to chant.

 

I was hot and uncomfortable. I yanked my scarf off and crumpled it up in my hand, wishing I had worn a lighter coat. I glanced over at Brian. He was sitting by himself, straight-backed with his head held high in desperate confidence. There was a little empty buffer zone around him and I had a pang of sadness to see him there, slightly apart from the family section, everybody not quite looking at him. I regretted coming with only Dominique and not thinking to have brought him now, but what could I have done? The band should have sat together, we should have talked it out beforehand. We had all been running around like chickens with their heads cut off. There was no practice for a thing like this.

 

I sighed, realizing my thoughts were also running aimlessly in circles. Having quite lost track of what was happening in the service, I didn’t feel guilty indulging myself in some futile musing. I supposed that we really hadn’t been doing much talking it out these past two months. I wondered when it had even become possible for the three of us to not even exchange phone calls before an event as big as this. It was obviously natural to grow apart as the fame and the money started rolling in—we weren’t living all together in the back of a van for one thing. We went home now, separately. But still, before we stopped making music, rarely would a day pass without me hearing from someone. That night with John had been a grief and alcohol-fueled anomaly.

 

It struck me then that this was it. Everything we had worked for was through. Sure I was still a musician, but without a band, what was I? I had had my fun with solo stuff but Queen was always there to run back to. The thought that it was gone now took my breath away and had me gaping at the foreign priests, the haze of incense hanging in the air and the all too solid and real casket in the front of the chapel.

 

I saw movement in the corner of my eye and turned in time to see Brian quickly walking away, the back of his long, elegant hand pressed to his mouth. The look on his face seem to echo my own thoughts and for an irrational second I thought he had somehow read my mind. I hesitated for a moment and then caught Elton John watching me watch Brian. _Go,_ he mouthed soundlessly to me and so I slipped away as unobtrusively as possible, following the long-limbed guitarist.

 

As soon as I left the room, the horrible stuffiness cleared from my head and I could breathe again. It was good to have a purpose instead of the numbing passivity of waiting inside. _Waiting for what? Closure?_ I snorted. _Bloody likely._

 

I trailed him to the loo and a sudden awful certainty about what had just happened settled over me. _Oh, God, I shouldn’t have come, I am terrible at stuff like this._ I caught a glimpse of a water dispenser out of the corner of my eye and, with an uncharacteristic sense of foresight, paused to fill up one of the flimsy little cups. Maybe the water would excuse my intrusion.

 

By the time I had completed this task, Brian had gone ahead of me into the restroom. I opened the door slowly, unsurprised perhaps by the sound of retching coming from within, but not sure how I would be received. I wanted to turn around and run when I saw Brian hadn’t even bothered to close the stall door and was on his knees on the grimy floor. _I can’t even begin to understand what he is going through. What can I say?_

 

As I debated just turning around and slipping out, Brian slowly straightened and turned to look at me. His face was pale and looked like some Romantic poet before the consumption really set in and made me feel like a little kid trying to grasp their older siblings’ angst and drama. I tightened my fist around the scarf in my hand and tried to focus on looking relaxed and sympathetic.

 

“Umm,” I stuttered. _Oh, great start. Very suave._ Brian’s expression was utterly still and gave me no encouragement. I glanced down at the glass in my hand. _Ah, right._ “You looked like you needed this.” I winced. _You idiot, perfect, let’s draw attention to the fact that you caught him heaving._ “Uh…that is, you sounded like…” _Not helping, just shut up._ “Well.”

 

Brian made no sign that he noticed my stumbling but reached for the glass with a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” he said, clearing his throat and coloring in embarrassment. He drank the water, not meeting my eyes. I could see him trying to come up with an excuse, a way to explain why he ran out of the funeral to puke his guts out in the bathroom. I knew that grief manifested itself in strange ways, I thought about the aftermath of my accident on that foggy road with my old band all those long years ago, but somehow I knew that this reaction was due to something more than simple sorrow…something darker and more sinister than that. Brian cleared his throat again. “I think it might have been the incense or something.”

 

I was staring at him now that I had the luxury of his gaze being turned away. His dark lashes were clearly outlined against his pale cheeks as he looked down at the glass and his hand trembled very slightly. He lifted his head and finally looked at me and I found that I could not look away. His face and his clear eyes that gleamed with unshed tears had me mesmerized and frozen. I mentally played back what he had just said and nearly snorted from the absurdity of it. I suppressed the laughter but jerked a little and shook my head at him.

 

“Brian, don’t be ridiculous,” I thought about just whom I was talking to. “Or at least more ridiculous than normal. We both know that…” I quite lost track of what I was saying as he swallowed and my whole attention focused on the way his throat moved. Unbidden, the image flashed in my mind of him kneeling in front of me, swallowing just like that, my hands buried in his impossibly silky, long curls.

 

The sound that the paper cup made as he set it on the floor was not a loud noise. But in the close, still room, it echoed and startled me from my reverie. Brian got to his feet, moving with an unnatural grace and I took a shaky step away, senselessly convinced that he had seen the contents of my guilty thoughts. Something liquid moved in his eyes and I gulped. I tore my eyes away from him. _Please, no._ When I snuck a glance back over at him, he was far closer to me than I expected.

 

Brian leaned towards me, his eyes slightly vacant. My mind started to go blank in panic as I realized that after all these years it was finally happening, Brian was about to kiss me, and all I could do was stand there. Only during the kiss did I think what a monumentally bad idea it was.

 

 _Oh, God. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening._ The words repeated like a mantra in my head and I was convinced that if I held still enough and thought them enough, this moment would have never happened. I had seen the look on Brian’s face as he had left the service and it was not the look of a man prepared to emotionally cope with kissing his best friend at his lover’s funeral. Hell, I was pretty sure I wasn’t wearing that look either.

 

I couldn’t feel my hands and I couldn’t seem to get any air into my lungs despite gasping like a drowning man the moment Brian touched me. Brian echoed my motionlessness, unmoving except the slow, sensual touch of his lip against mine, his hands held awkwardly away from his side as though if he moved he would shatter.

 

I felt heat sweep through me again and break out in tiny droplets of sweat on my forehead and my upper lip. Ever so slowly, the physically of Brian started to register. The heat surged through me and pooled in my groin. I could smell traces of incense clinging to his shirt and hair but beneath that, he smelled like the crispness of fall, of dried roses and of a salty strange mix of sweat and tears.

 

I could not hold still forever. Instinct propelled by desire opened my mouth and had me thrusting against the intrusion of his tongue. As I pushed into his mouth, my arousal crested along with a heady rush of adrenaline. I suddenly understood the phrase, ‘weak in the knees.’

 

It propelled me to do something I had fantasized about for so many years and I shyly brought up one hand along the side of his face, feeling both the softness of his skin and the harsh roughness of a patch of missed stubble. Then I buried my hand in his hair.

 

His hair was softer than I had imagined, not at all coarse and impossibly dense. The movement of my hand sent fresh waves of his scent wafting over me. He moaned against me and the noise loosed something fierce and wild in me and I pulled back, suddenly afraid. Brian pursued and deepened the kiss.

 

I felt curiously as though I was watching myself from outside of my body. I had wanted this moment for so long that now that it was happening, now of all times when it was least expected, it barely seemed real. I observed my own powerful arousal as if it belonged to somebody else.

 

I took an uneven breath and Brian opened his eyes. Something seemed to catch his attention but perhaps it was just the dawning realization of just exactly what we were doing. Terror widened his eyes and he pulled away with a strangled yelp.

 

I pressed my fingertips to my lips. I could still feel the moist heat of his kiss. Thoughts seemed to follow emotions in sluggish waves and the entire improbability of the occasion only dawned on me as I stood there, painfully hard in the WC of a funeral home, at _Freddie’s_ funeral, just having kissed his mourning…well, widower, I supposed, and my best friend.

 

The crash of the stall door woke me from my reverie. I realized that Brian had shut himself in there again and I closed my eyes painfully. _This is not good_.

 

“Brian, come out,” I pleaded, leaning on the door.

 

“Please just go away.” His voice was rough and did not quite sound like himself.

 

“C’mon. Let’s talk about it.”

 

“ _Go away,_ Taylor!” he snapped, frustration and irritation warring in his voice.

 

That stung. I found myself blinking back the emotions that had been threating to overtake me the whole day. A vindictive anger followed hard on the heels of hurt and sadness. “Fuck you too, May,” I spat. “Just don’t forget— _you_ were the one who kissed _me_.”

 

I stalked out of the restrooms desperately wanting to punch something. I kicked the wall viciously and the resulting pain reminded me why I try not to do that anymore. _I don’t want to see Brian every again,_ I thought a tad irrationally, _he can just stay in there and rot, for all I care. This is what you get for trying to help someone._ I stomped around the corner of the hallway and nearly ran headlong into John who was obviously searching for something…or someone.

 

“Roger!” he said in shock as he stopped dead in his tracks and held out his arms to prevent the otherwise inevitable collision. “I’ve been looking for you. Where’s Brian? I saw him leave the funeral. Is everything okay?” John looked close to tears himself and I paused to reflect that it was probably only Veronica’s presence that was holding him together.

 

I briefly considered trying to obfuscate, but thought it was probably no use. It would come out eventually anyway. “He’s in the loo. He…I…that is—we kissed.”

 

John gaped at me and I chalked up a mental point. It wasn’t easy to surprise the watchful man. “Roger! How could you? It is the funeral, for chrissake’s.”

 

I opened my mouth to defend myself but then paused to reconsider. John had a tendency to take Freddie’s side in arguments and while I was angry at Brian myself, I had an oddly possessive need to protect him from John’s derision. So I merely shrugged. “It was not a good idea.” _There. That’s technically not a lie. No need to clarify whose bad idea it was._

 

I felt so angry that electricity seemed to crackle along the surface of my skin, just waiting to lash out. I was angry at Brian, for messing up everything I had spent so many years perfecting, I was angry at myself for falling to temptation so easily and I was angry at Freddie for going and fucking dying on us.

 

John looked at me pityingly and said, “Roger, you need to work on your self-control.”

 

And I was angry at Deaky, for being a supercilious prick. “Well, it must be bloody brilliant for you being so fucking put together all the God be damned time. Excuse me for inflicting you with my problems, we can’t all be John-look-at-my-designer-family-Deacon.”

 

I winced at the look of surprised hurt that seemed to blossom on his face. It was like kicking a puppy. “Roger…” he started, hesitantly.

 

“Look, John, I didn’t mean it like that,” I pressed my hands against my face and hoped everything would just go away. When I lowered them again, John was still staring at me with concern. _No such luck._ “Can we talk about it later? I need…that is, I think I just need to be alone to think things through right now.”

 

“Sure, Rog.” John lay a hand on my shoulder. “Do you mind if I go try to talk to Brian?”

 

I was surprised at the relief that flooded me at his offer. “I am so sorry, John. Thank you for that. You really are a great friend.”

 

“It must be because I am so fucking put together,” he said with a sidelong look that told me the comment had angered him at least a little.

 

I shoved my hands in my pockets, uncaring for the wrinkled mess I was making of the suit and looked at him sheepishly. “God, I’m an idiot.”

 

“Yes,” he agreed and then gave me a wry, half-smile and turned away to go.

 

I wandered the halls of the crematorium aimlessly, guided only by a desire to get away from the muffled sounds of the gathered crowd. I made my way in the opposite direction of wherever I heard people and eventually ended up in a long, abandoned corridor with one heavy brick wall that I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was on the other side of it.

 

 _This is it. This is the end,_ some voice in my head told me. _From this point on, nothing is going to be the same. Freddie Mercury is dead._

 

I broke down, not giving a fuck who might see me huddled here in this dusty corner. I wept for Freddie, for the friend that had meant so many things to me. My rival. My jealousy. My lust. My sin. And for the musician who had taken me on this wild ride, to places I never thought possible when I was just a kid from Cornwall with a half-baked band sneaking off to see The Who with Brian. I wept for all the people I had hurt along the way because I had never managed to grow up, to do the normal maturing everybody is forced into. That all had been swept away when everyone started falling over themselves to see to our every whim. For the relationships I had started never intending to keep or to nurture and all the promises I had broken. And last of all, I spared a few tears for me and the elaborate life I had built for myself in my head that I had finally after decades of struggle and self-abuse been able to let go of. Only to have Brian tantalizingly thrust it back into the realm of possibility with a grief-addled kiss in a crematorium bathroom.

 

  _I was content. In a way. I had finally stopped dreaming of him and I had killed that last stubborn sprout of hope. It had felt good, the clean, pure pain-pleasure of freedom._ I closed my eyes and let the memory take me.

 

_Brian looks up from where he is crouched with Felix and the movement catches my eyes from where I am ensconced in an alcove, taking a break from the party with an illicit cigarette. Or rather, a cigarette Brian would scold me for and then Freddie would scold him for reprimanding a guest until I stubbed it out in exasperation. Felix was showing Brian the picture he had drawn Uncle Bri for his birthday, a drawing which he had made sure met with my approval. The kid is in the phase where he idolizes everything I did which makes me feel like shit because I am only around on the odd weekend and pisses Dom off to no end because she has to be the bad guy all the while hearing about how great Dad is. Not an easy situation for her, I can admit, but still no excuse for her to call me the things she does._

_I watch Brian carefully, taking a deep drag of the cigarette. His eyes shine with an unnatural gloss and he blinks rapidly. I am suddenly pulled into a vision of what could have been as I see him there with my son. Brian always takes the time to talk to the children, mine and John’s, always watches them with a lingering eye when Freddie decides it’s time to leave. I am laid low by the fanciful daydream of us raising Felix and Rory together and how it could have been. Brian taking them to the zoo and explaining about habitats and shit, me making poop jokes. Brian would look at me in that stern, disapproving way of his but I would be able to see how his eyes crinkled in the corners and how he had to bite his lip to keep from laughing._

_Before the fantasy can completely consume me, it strikes me that Brian is not looking up from my child, his eyes brimming with tears, aimlessly. He is gazing across the room to where Freddie is standing, his back to us, regaling a knot of people with an enthusiastic story. It is Brian’s birthday, but two thirds of the people here are Freddie’s friends, a fact that hasn’t escaped anyone. Brian is staring at Freddie with such a wistful sorrow that I can hardly bear to watch. I feel as if I am witnessing something unbearably private._

_It is in that moment that I make a decision. I swear that from this moment I will stop hoping against hope that something will happen between Freddie and Brian, that they will break up and I can sweep in to rescue the pieces that will be Brian. I used to play out these things in my head so often. I used to be so angry and wish the most terrible things on them._ It’s time to grow up, Rog, _I tell myself._ It’s about fucking time.

 

I scrubbed the tears from my face, angrily. What else could possibly happen? One friend dead, the other a wreck and my career in shambles. Not that I need the money, I could skate by for years. And go completely starkers in the meantime. _But Brian is kissing you in public bathrooms_ , an insidious voice whispered slyly. _Not like this_ , I cried out internally. _I never wanted it to happen like this._


	10. Chapter 10

***

_The days are getting longer. No more does dusk creep in far too early in the evening, draining the grey sky of any semblance of cheer and making the house feel even more claustrophobic than the cold weather already does. It seemed as though the dark winter would lay hold to the earth forever. But surely and relentlessly, spring is over taking winter with greening grass and shorter nights._

_Brian is glad of the longer days. This past winter had left him drained and shaken and he blames the darkness. As soon as he notes the lengthening shadows on the floor, he finds himself gripped by some implacable terror. Night is when the memories come stalking up behind him on silent paws, night is when he can no longer ignore the endless feedback loops in his own mind._

_So the nights are shorter now, yes. But in reality that only means a couple fewer hours spent on guard or in battle. By the time the first light of dawn breaks each day, he finds himself exhausted and hungover, only able to spend the day recuperating in bed. Bed, of course, is one of the guest bedrooms as that_ other _door is kept firmly closed. Even still Brian can feel it lurking in the back of his head like a toothache or a bruised bone, waiting for dusk when the memories would burst forth from the forbidden room and overwhelm him._

_Today has been especially bad. He has not been able to gather up enough energy to do anything other than to just lay there on the hard double mattress, timing his pulse by the pounding in his head and watching the bright patch of light from his window track across the bedroom ceiling. He watches, fascinated, as the glowing rectangle creeps down the far wall, slowly dimming and reminding him how few hours of light were left. He sighs. He had hoped to feel more recuperated before having to face the shadows again._

_He drags his protesting body from the bed and sets about preparing for the night as carefully as any general facing a critical engagement with the enemy. At least as carefully as any general whose head screams at him to lie down again and whose heart beats like a wounded bird’s after the slightest exertion. He scrounges around under the bed. Numerous empty bottles have gotten kicked under in an effort to maintain some semblance of order. After a lengthy search and much swearing that leaves him winded, he finally manages to retrieve two half-empty bottles of brandy, a dusty, but unopened bottle of wine and a fifth of scotch. He frowns at the bottles and listlessly rearranges them, but they stubbornly remain at the same number and levels. It means he is going to have to go out to the store soon, a prospect he dreads nearly as much as facing the night unassisted._

_Gathering up the bottles, Brian carries them to the window, ignoring the screaming in his knees as he rises. He lines up the bottles on the windowsill. He hates seeing his reflection in the dark window every time he goes for a new drink but he masochistically continues with this routine. He feels as though he deserves the sick creeping shame and self-loathing that turns his stomach every time he sees his disheveled hair, bloodshot eyes and lined face in the darkly revealing makeshift mirror. He uncorks the wine bottle with shaking hands, only dropping the corkscrew once, knowing that he might not be able to successfully complete that task later._

_The last of the twilight is slowly ebbing from the land. Already the house is filling with deep shadows and, looking out the window, Brian can hardly make out the definition of the lawn against the line of the drive. He lingers at the window, swallowing down bile, the trees make looming macabre shapes against the lighter sky and seem to speak of some evil portent. He takes an unsteady gulp of the brandy, coughing as the harsh burn surprises him like the first taste always does._

_He presses a hand to his cheek. He can still feel the burn of where Roger had stuck him, or is it only his overwrought imagination? It is hard to tell sometimes, he had relived the moment so many times at so many degrees of intoxication that the actual event pales in comparison. He drinks from the bottle again, a disdainfully ineffective balm. Roger’s words have become twisted in his mind, frustration and love morphing into mocking disgust._ He’s dead, Brian. It’s been over a year. Look at you. _He tips the brandy bottle to his lips, trying to muffle the voices but only succeeding to distort them further. He sloshes the bottle, surprised at how little remains and how easy it seems to go down now._

_He wants to sleep. He doesn’t have to face his whirling thoughts when he falls into the sweet oblivion of sleep. Yes, he wants to sleep. But he is afraid. He is afraid of the dreams that are waiting for him once he surrenders to his unconscious mind. Dark dreams full of shadows and shifting ground, his hands glistening wetly with deep burgundy blood and always Freddie’s face, staring at him unblinking. The dreams always wake him paralyzed with fear and soaking wet with sweat. Sleep is a near impossibility after one of the dreams anyway, and so he hardens his resolve to avoid it altogether._

_His fear of sleep had him digging through the contents of his little toilet case, the one he had always taken on tour and that had sat untouched for these past eight long years. Below the razors and the half-empty toothpaste tubes was a small, silver pill case, one he had rarely opened but never threw away. Saving it for what exactly? He isn’t sure. Surely he couldn’t have foreseen the place he found himself in now. The case had come from a roadie who had found him fallen asleep on an instrument trunk in the early days when the touring had just gotten intense and the lack of sleep was hitting everyone hard._

_“Here,” the man had said, handing him the case full of unmarked triangular blue pills. “These will keep you up.”_

_“What are they?” he had asked, still feeling sluggish and foggy from the nap and slightly apprehensive._

_“Purple hearts. Harmless things, all bands use ‘em to keep going. The Beatles did.”_

_He had accepted the pills with a cautious word of thanks. He had only ended up using them a few times, they made him feel jittery, paranoid and raw. Still, he had never gotten rid of them and he well remembered the rush of sudden alertness, the high burst of euphoria like he could take on the world. On that night last fall when it seemed certain that he would lose his fight against sleep, he thought of the little case._

_For the past couple months, he has always taken two of the little pills, early in the evening when he could still think straight, and then he carefully put the silver case away with the last resilient shreds of his perfectionist personality. He is surprised, therefore, to find the case still in the pocket of his jeans on this night of all nights. He considers the case with the overly precise care of the drunk, his mind whispering enticingly to him of sleep. He blinks and his eyelids linger in the closed position, heavy as the weight of his brain in his head. Sleep seems distressingly near. He must not sleep._

_“What the hell,” he murmurs in the silent room and shakes out two more. The pills shift and blur like a mirage and he swallows them, wondering why his lips are already wet with brandy and his throat burns as though he had already swallowed something moments before. He feels a disconcerting surge of déjà vu._

_He watches his hands turning the silver case over and over. They do not seem like they belong to him, in fact they don’t seem like real hands at all. He blinks and now the case is a sixpence. He turns it over his knuckles, glinting silver in the lamplight, and then makes it disappear like a street corner magician. He looks up and feels no surprise to find Freddie perched on the edge of the bed, wearing his harlequin leotard, his face hidden by the soft black veil of his hair. “Not content to torment me only in my dreams, huh?” he asks with a sneer, stumbling over the words, “Now you come to me waking as well?” The thing on the bed that wears Freddie’s form says nothing. “Look at me, dammit!” he shouts, startling a black cat and a white cat which leap from the bed as Freddie’s apparition collapses in on itself and disappears._

_He presses his hands to his eyes and moans, now he can hear Freddie whisper, “_ _You are mine, Brian. Don’t you get it? You couldn’t leave me if you tried_ _.”_

_“Shut up,” he groans. “Oh God, shut up!”_

_The doctor his mum had dragged him out to see had prescribed him some red pills with a long name he can’t quite remember. “These will help you sleep, even you out,” the doctor had said with a look of jaded weariness, tired of dealing with the anxieties of the rich and famous even as it paid for the sleek Porsche sitting out in the car park. But the pills made him walk around in a fog, sleeping and waking seamlessly blending together until he could no longer think of why basic tasks like eating and grooming were even necessary. He thought it must be what being dead was like. Sensation and perception reached him delayed and muffled through an intense numbness. Yes, it must be what death was like. Some days the little red pills didn’t seem so bad._

_He stops and looks at his hands, pale and lined with blue. Does he mean that? He tries to remember what Freddie had told him about his theories of the afterlife. He had been convinced of some sort of positive place but all Brian can think of is the fact that whatever form the hereafter takes, Freddie will be there and he will know what Brian has done. What he has thought. His head aches. He thinks of the aspirin in the nightstand drawer and goes to retrieve some. Counting proves more difficult than expected, so he tosses back a blurry handful._

_He thinks of what Roger had said to him. Unable to control the masochistic slide of his mind, he imagines Roger and Freddie together, pictures dark and light tangled together. He can believe how lovely they would have been. He wonders if they had worried about him catching them together. He wonders if there had been close calls. The mental image makes him feel sick and tingly with rage and jealousy, but there is something else that is deeper and more shameful. Base arousal licks at the core of his body and he remembers Roger as he first saw him, all wide blue eyes and the wicked, crooked grin of a fallen angel. He remembers how the girls would melt when the drummer turned that face towards them. In some ways, news of Roger and Freddie’s affair has been easier to accept than their proclamations of love for him, because he has never believed there was anything about himself that should have captured either that bright cherubim’s eye or the attention of the flamboyantly exotic jinni._

_He isn’t sure how many of the little blue pills he has taken…or is it the red ones? “One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small and the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all,” he quotes and suddenly is taken by a wave of amusement. He falls giggling to the floor, throwing back a swallow of what he thinks is water but turns out to be harsh scotch. He nearly drops the scotch bottle in his clumsy surprise but catches himself on hands that skid on blue and red pills that have ended up scattered across the floor. “You are a fucking mess, Brian,” he tells himself, seriously, his laughter fading. “Freddie didn’t want you…or only you. And Roger won’t want you anymore after last night.”_

_He stares at the pills scattered on the floor, the colors blurring and dancing in his vision. Brian knows the number of pills must be important. He can’t remember why exactly but he thinks it has something to do with his health and safety. He laughs and the rough bark of his voice startles him. His health, what a joke…but still… he tries to concentrate but the haze of alcohol in his head makes it difficult._

_He fights back a wave of self-loathing that rises like acid bile in the back of his throat._ What would he think of you if he could see you now, huh, Brian? He faced death so bravely, now look at you, a coward who can’t even decide to put his own pathetic self out of misery.

_Maybe he could think straight with just a few more blue pills…no, red…maybe both to be safe. Shortly after he makes up his mind, the dark comes relentlessly flowing in from the windows and under the doors and pulls him down into oblivion._

**Chapter 10- April 1993**

_They say I'm goin' crazy._

_They say I got a lot of water in my brain._

_Ah, got no common sense._

_I got nobody left to believe in._

 

 

An acrid whiff of smoke drifted past Roger and made him sneeze. It was stiflingly dark and he had no idea where he was. Heat pressed against the side of his face like a physical force and he inhaled the hot, smoky air again. As he coughed, he realized all was dark because his eyes were closed. He carefully opened them and then blinked against the blinding light. His eyes adjusting and watering, he slowly began to take in the scene of devastation around him. The light that had seemed so bright to his unadjusted eyes was actually a weak and eerie overcast orange glow and low clouds hung from the sky. The light cast a sickly pallor over everything and, as he looked down, his tan looked sallow and glistened with sweat. His white trousers were streaked with grime and torn at the knee.

 

A metallic groan reverberated through the air after a gust of fume-laden air rustled his hair. Roger looked up in apprehension at the ceiling above him. The warped rafters swayed precariously in the breeze. Something large had fallen through the beams and left a jagged hole behind. Roger glanced around for the source of the heat that still pushed against his body and made his eyes burn. A fire was burning, crackling and releasing great gouts of black smoke and orange-red billows of flame. It was below the hole in the roof and to the rear of the partially enclosed space. He could just barely make out the shattered remains of a helicopter past the flames and smoke.

 

He was standing on the edge of some large, outdoor arena. In the distance, he could make out what used to be stands but were now ruined and crumbling skeletons. He had seen warzones in movies that seemed less desolate than this. His skin crawled from the complete and utter lack of any signs of life. Sections of the stands smoldered with a slow burning fire that was the source of the smoke that hovered in oily clouds over everything. The field had a strange lumpiness to it, as if it had been dug up and the earth left in uneven piles. Something about the field nagged at him and made him feel queasy but he wasn’t sure what it was.

 

A sense of dread and foreboding began to rise in Roger’s stomach as he scanned the stadium. It all seemed so familiar, as if he had stood on this exactly spot before. Around him rose twisted and mangled beams of metal. He stepped forward and his foot hit something. He looked down. The object he had nearly tripped on was a charred sheet of metal that bore the right half of a red Q, outlined in bright yellow. Despite the heat in the breathless stadium, he began to shiver.

 

He felt a sudden compulsion to go and see exactly what the dark piles on the field were made of. Warring with his curiosity was an intense fear that gripped him and made it hard to breathe. _Don’t look!_ his brain screamed at him but his feet took him inexorably onward. He scrambled over the wreckage, there were broken shards of glass everywhere and he had to concentrate on where he put his hands to avoid cutting himself. Panting and coughing from the exertion and smoke, Roger came to a series of three large drop-offs and the horrible sense of familiarity started to grow stronger. He navigated the giant steps carefully, dangling himself over each edge by his fingertips and then carefully dropping to the next surface. At one point he landed on his ankle funny and the shock sent spasms of pain shooting up his leg. He wanted to go back, but the dark need pulled him on. He lowered himself over the last and largest of edges and finally stood on the field, a few yards away from the nearest of the rough mounds. Smoke whirled around him, disturbed by his movement and then cleared, affording him a clear view.

 

Sickness rose up in his throat and sent him to his knees as the reality of the gruesome knolls hit him all at once. _Bodies,_ he thought, retching, _they are piles of bodies._ He looked up to the sky, blinking back from his watering eyes and gasping for fresh air. A scorched, meaty smell wafted past and clung to the back of his throat and set him coughing and gagging once more. But he had seen something of the skyline in that moment and the vision brought with it a grim certainty. The overhanging roof around the edge of the arena had collapsed in most places, allowing for a view of two white, domed towers, one broken and crumbling but the other mostly intact and rising through the rubble and smoke. The terrible déjà vu made all too much sense. He was at Wembley.

 

He got to his feet and began to run, blindly. He was filled with a desperate need to get out and he tore through the macabre maze, skittering around pyres he carefully did not examine and avoiding tangled sections of the fallen roof. His foot caught on something and he was sent sprawling. He lay on the grass and breathed in the fresh smell of the earth he had disturbed. It was the first pleasant scent he had experienced in this place. Roger instinctively looked at what had tripped him and found it was an outstretched arm. Eyes wide, he followed the arm up to a puffy white jacket and a tangled brown mop of hair. “John?” he whispered and reached out, trembling, to touch the half-curled fingers. The fingers were icy cold. Roger threw himself backwards, scrambled to his feet and started running again.

 

A flash of sunny yellow caught his eye and he slowed down against his better instincts. Amid the tangled wreckage of a huge lighting rig, a yellow jacket that Roger knew all too well shrouded a figure on the edge of a mass of apparent victims of the collapse. He approached slowly. As he got closer he could make out a line of buckles and white piping at the shoulder and wrist. He knew what face he would see if he dared to take his eyes off of that jacket.

 

Roger fell to his knees next to Freddie’s body. He grasped a corner of the yellow jacket and rubbed it between his fingers weakly. “Hey,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Hey, wake up.” The slick texture of the fabric felt so real. He looked into the singer’s face. His skin looked healthy and tanned, he seemed much more alive than Roger had seen Freddie looking for years. His face was filled out and beautiful, he could have been sleeping if not for the faint bluish tinge under his olive skin and a crusted and dark red trickle of blood tracing down from his hairline and seeping into his full eyelashes laying still against his cheekbone.

 

The harsh cry of a carrion bird broke his reverie. He glanced up towards the top of pile of bodies and looked dead in the eyes of the largest crow he had ever seen, its beak gleaming wetly in the eerie orange light. He slowly got to his feet, feeling sick again. He looked at Freddie’s body one last time and then reluctantly started walking away from the derelict stage and the remains of his bandmates.

 

He was nearing the edge of the field. A great, gaping black hole in the stands loomed in front of him and he slowed mechanically. The fires smoldered lower in the depths of the crater and the oily, clinging smoke wended out of the dark and onto the field. Occasionally, the mercurial breeze whipped the smoke into strange shapes that hinted at some knowable form. A face here. A devilish creature there.

 

Roger’s steps sent shock waves through his body as something drew him onward. He almost knew what he was about to find. This part of the ground was relatively free of debris, the vivid green grass contrasting sharply with a flash of rich mahogany. The blaze of color resolved into the remains of a smashed red guitar a few paces ahead of him. He stared at the guitar, willing the white shape that he could see in the corner of his eye to disappear. Roger was gasping for air, he couldn’t quite seem to catch his breath.

 

The awful compulsion seized him again and he was pulled, unwilling, towards the crumpled figure laid out on the grass. Brian looked almost peaceful compared to the other remains, his eyes were closed and his hair spread out in a cloud around him. Roger knelt next to the body, shock making his limbs stiff. He reached out a trembling hand to smooth a tendril of hair from Brian’s unmarred face.

 

Brian’s eyes snapped open.

 

Roger threw himself backwards onto his hands with a strangled cry. Pain shot through his wrists. Brian’s eyes were black and unworldly, all pupil with no iris or white. He wanted to scramble away from those grasping undead pits but found himself frozen in place, his fingers clutching at the turf against his will. Roger opened his mouth and a piercing scream filled the air. The scream must have been coming from him but he could neither feel it nor control it. Brian’s shadowed eyes swallowed him down, pulling him in as inexorably as a black hole, and suddenly he was falling, vertigo rushing up from the core of his stomach. He seemed to tumble for ages, the darkness rushing in and drowning out his scream. Then, somehow, there was a hand on his crotch, rubbing him and an answering hardness rose to meet the bone cold hand. A low and melodious voice whispered, _you want that, don’t you?_ _You need it_. “Yes, oh God, yes,” he whimpered, helplessly horrified. He fought his arousal as if it were a wild beast intent on rending him limb from limb but it overpowered him. His need deepened and intensified and suddenly with a great wrenching pull, his orgasm ripped through him and he was coming in great spurts. Dark eyes were watching him, saying, _come for me…come for me. Oh, why didn’t you come for me?_

 

He woke up sobbing and drenched in a cold sweat, a damp circle spreading across his pajama bottoms. He threw off the covers and tried to calm his racing heart, fear and lust still coursing through his veins.

 

There was a piercing noise in his head. He was still screaming…no, it was the shrill ring of the telephone next to his bed. That must have been what had woken him. Trying to slow his heart rate to the point where he could make out individual beats, he reached out and picked up the receiver.

 

“Hello?” he managed to croak out.

 

John’s voice on the other end of the line was panicky and strained. Roger had to fight back the image of the other man lying dead on the bright green grass of Wembley. “Sorry to call so late, Roger…”

 

“No problem,” he gasped, clinging to the sound of another human voice to chase away the lingering terror of his nightmare.

 

“Is everything alright? You sound…”

 

Roger took a deep breath and tried to compose himself. “Yeah—sorry, it’s just…well, the phone startled me.”

 

“Umm, sorry.” John seemed to also be steadying himself. “Roger, I think we should go check on Brian. He just left me a very strange message…”

 

The foreboding rushed in again. The desolation he had seen in Brian’s hazel eyes after he had struck him merged with the accusatory blank stare of his bottomless eyes in the dream and Roger was almost certain of what had happened. “What did it say?”

 

“He said he was leaving too. Just like me…and Freddie. You didn’t tell him about me, did you? He didn’t sound right, his words were kinda slurred, like he had been drinking or…something.”

 

“I can make it to your house in twenty minutes…” Roger began, leaping up from the bed and stripping off his wet pajamas one-handed.

 

“Actually, I’m right outside. Calling on my carphone,” John interrupted with a trace of embarrassment.

 

Roger stopped dead. “You _were_ worried.”

 

“Yeah,” John admitted. “Well, you didn’t hear his voice on that recording. It sounded like he was already dead.” Roger flinched at the word and took an unsteady breath. “I came as fast as I could.”

 

“Let’s go then.” He paused and thought about John’s driving. “I’ll drive.”

 

After some trouble finding a pair of pants and attempting to put both socks on one foot, Roger was clothed and raced out to the front of the house. True to his word, John was waiting next to his car in the wide circle drive at the bottom of the front steps. Without comment, he tossed the keys to Roger, who caught them and they both climbed into the front seats. The night was silently and deceptively peaceful as the roar of the starting engine broke the stillness.

 

“No offense about the driving, eh?” he asked John awkwardly.

 

John rolled his eyes and then clutched at the door as Roger took off with a spin of the tires and a shower of gravel. “Nah, I’m happy to relinquish control. Too much pressure.” John’s voice was tense and clipped. “You’re a better driver anyway.” John paused and reconsidered. “Faster, anyway. Just don’t crash my car.”

 

“Haha, very funny.” Roger pulled the car out onto the carriageway, it was empty this time of night and the complete lack of human activity made the skin on the back of his neck crawl. He took a moment to think about Brian, everything had happened so quickly after the dream that there had been no time for worry or speculation, only action. Scenes from the nightmare blended with fresh theories until he wished he could shut his mind’s eye to the ghastly images.

 

“What do you think happened?” Roger hoped John’s grounded and cautious ideas would help to stop the panicky paranoid worse-case scenarios whirling through his head. He didn’t think that Brian would try to…he couldn’t bear to think it…but he wondered how well he even knew the man. A year and a half ago, he would have said better than anybody. Now he wasn’t so sure.

 

“He’s been trying to forget. I don’t know if it’s just Freddie’s death or something else, but there is something he can’t stand to remember.” John said, lips pursed. “He has seen a doctor, they gave him some kind of pill. Who knows how it reacts with alcohol?”

 

“Jesus,” Roger moaned. “Intentional?” he breathed, barely able to voice the thought.

 

“I hope not,” John said, frowning out the window at the dark trees whipping by. “If that’s the case, we have even less time.”

 

“Jesus,” Roger repeated and clenched the steering wheel tighter. He wanted to ease the car a bit faster but reminded himself that they couldn’t help Brian if he ended up causing another wreck. John seemed just as restless, fidgeting in his seat constantly.

  

“I just don’t know why _tonight,_ ” John fretted, rhythmically locking and unlocking his car door in a nervous gesture Roger was trying to not let annoy him. “I saw him Sunday and he seemed…well, not _better_ …but not particularly worse.”

 

Roger shifted uncomfortably. John looked at him sharply and he could feel a hot flush coloring his neck. “Roger, what did you do?” John asked seriously.

 

“I went over there yesterday. I wanted to talk to him, to get all this stuff between us sorted out.”

 

“Why do I get the feeling that isn’t what happened?”

 

Roger grimaced. John’s sarcasm was almost as bad as his silent treatments. “We had a fight. I hit him.”

 

In other circumstances, he might have taken pleasure at the sight of the other man dumbstruck. It wasn’t often that he could surprise John. “ _You_ hit _him_? How did that possibly happen?”

 

“I told him about me and Freddie.” John was silent for a moment. “Please don’t tell me it was a stupid time to expose that dirty little secret. I bloody well know that.”

 

“I wasn’t going to. I was wondering how that conversation could have ever have ended with you hitting him.”

 

Roger sighed. “I guess I wanted a reaction or _something_ from him. You know how he shuts everything down…”

 

“Yeah, it upset Freddie.” Roger looked at John in surprise. John shrugged one-shouldered. “Freddie liked to try and provoke him—well, _liked_ is the wrong word—felt compelled to push him for a response. He didn’t think it was healthy to stay bottled up like that. I guess you and Freddie are alike in your penchant for therapeutic temper tantrums.”

 

Roger debated whether to be offended and decided it wasn’t worth it, John was probably right. “Well, _I_ pushed him. I told him that he had to come to terms with the facts and that he needed to get some sort of grip on Freddie’s death. I told him that it’s been over a year.”

 

“Oh, Roger…”

 

“He still didn’t get angry. Not really. But he told me that he thought I didn’t really love him, that I was a slut who switched to him now that Freddie’s gone.” Roger stopped speaking for a moment and concentrated on the road. The moon was nearly full and bathed everything outside the reach of his headlights in a pale glow. It was amazing how the woods could look so peaceful when there were owls and foxes on the prowl, creatures battling for their very lives. “That’s when I hit him. It just made me so mad. Not the insult, really, I’ve heard worse than that from Dom.” _That woman can craft a real insult. One that gets under your skin and stays there, working itself deeper and deeper._ “Just that he could be so thick-headed and misconstrue everything so badly…”

 

“He’s confused, Roger. He doesn’t know how to process everything he feels about Freddie with these new feeling for you. Plus, the future is a big question mark for all of us…”

 

“I don’t think he’s thinking of the future.”

 

“You’re right. I guess that’s just us.”

 

Roger chanced a glance at John. His profile was lit by the moonlight and his face was impassive except a worry line between his brows and his lips were set with determination. He wondered why he had never fully appreciated John’s insightfulness, although, as he thought about it, it _had_ always been John and not Freddie or Brian or his family that he had gone to with his problems. _I wonder if he thinks of me as just a burden_? “Do you ever think of what it would have been like? If Freddie and Brian had never gotten together?” he said, impulsively.

 

John gave him a look. “Roger…” he said, warningly.

 

“No! Not that.” Roger cleared his throat and shifted. “ _Not…_ that. It’s just—it’s just that it has always been Freddie and Brian as this unit, well obviously a unit, and that’s meant, I guess, that  I’ve always had to take Brian’s side and you’ve always taken Freddie’s…” he trailed off, staring hard at the road.

 

He could feel John looking at him in that serious way of his, probably with his lower lip just sticking out slightly and the small line deepening between his eyebrows. “Go on,” he said.

 

“Well, where has that left us? We could have been friends.”

 

“We _are_ friends.” John’s voice was flat.

 

“You know what I mean.” Roger gestured vaguely, aware that the image of the other man lying on the ground had affected him deeply.

 

John sighed. “Roger, just leave it. It is what it is and nobody knows what could have been. Let’s just be happy with that.”

 

They lapsed into silence. They were almost to Brian and Freddie’s estate and Roger felt confident adding a bit more speed. Roger wondered, not for the first time, if he had ever managed to have a friendship that he didn’t fuck up somehow. _Stop it_ , he told himself, firmly, _it’s your self-pity that got you into this mess in the first place. Brian needs help now._ Roger pondered if it was simply grief and guilt over Roger that Brian was running from or if there was something more.

 

He made the turn onto the long, tree-lined drive that led to the estate, suddenly afraid of reaching their destination. The black metal gate that guarded the property stood half-open and Roger saw John sit up in concern. Phoebe had always been so careful of the gate, getting on the case of the drivers that forgot to close it properly. It left open was just another sign of everything that had changed. Roger guided the car past it and it seemed like the cast iron animals set into the pattern watched them as they passed.

 

As they pulled up in front of the house, Roger sighed. It wasn’t déjà vu this time because he knew why this seemed so familiar. It had been only yesterday that he had sat in his car outside Brian’s estate, nervously determined to make things better. And look how well that had gone. He was done with trying to be the hero, all he wanted now was to salvage things.

 

The house was as dark and lifeless as before. Roger pounded on the door for a while until John gently took his wrist and said, “Roger, I have a key.”

 

“Oh,” Roger replied with a flush of embarrassment. Suddenly, he was unsure. He looked up at the big door, perhaps expecting to see some sign that something was wrong, some plea for help. “What if we are overreacting? He won’t be happy to have us barge in if everything is fine.”

 

John was already turning the key in the lock and snorted dismissively at Roger’s anxiety. “Look, I’ll take the blame, if that makes you feel better. It would be far worse if something _had_ happened and we did nothing, right?”

 

“Right,” Roger agreed and then the door swung open.

 

John was immediately over the threshold and turning on lights. “Brian?” he called. “Brian! Are you okay?”

 

The cats were milling around in the entryway and came to greet the two men fretfully. Roger was reminded of how Phoebe had told him the cats acted oddly the day before Freddie died and his dread crested over him once more.

 

John returned to the entryway. Roger had barely realized he had gone. “Well, he’s not on the main floor. I checked and everything seems normal.” John glanced around as if expecting Brian to be huddled, overlooked, in some corner. “I would think he would respond to my calling.”

 

“Unless he can’t,” Roger said offhandedly and then looked at John in horror.

 

“Upstairs,” John said and Roger took off.

 

He ran up the stairs, clumsy in his hurry and falling to his hands and knees twice. He ignored the sound of John following and calling for him to wait. He couldn’t possible wait, he had the nagging sensation that he was already too late.

 

He wrenched open the door to the master bedroom and was hardly surprised to find it empty and musty from disuse. He racked his brain to think of which of the endless guest bedrooms down the dark hall Brian would be most likely to be using. In a flash of inspiration, he thought of the one at the end that overlooked the carriage house. Freddie always said the view was abysmal from that room and took vindictive glee in installing his least liked houseguests in it.

 

He tore away from the empty bedroom and back down the hall, nearly colliding with John who had managed to catch up. He gestured wordlessly to the end of the hall, trying to force more oxygen into his laboring lungs. John seemed to catch on and they both raced to the last guest room on the floor.

 

The door was shut but a trace of light was visible creeping out from underneath. In their haste, they got in each other’s way trying to open the door and finally John stepped back and let Roger wrench it open. His palms were slick with sweat and the knob slid in his hand for a terrifying moment before he gained purchase.

 

A single lamp was lit on the nightstand next to the bed. It cast a deceivingly cheerful golden puddle of light over the floor between the bed and the window. Illuminated on the floor was a sight that knocked Roger’s breath from his body just as surely as the time his university friends had procured a Slip ‘n Slide for late night entertainment and he had miscalculated his dive. Just like then he felt as though he would never be able to inflate his lungs again. This time the injury was not physical.

 

 Brian was sprawled spread-eagle on floor. He looked almost peaceful, even though he was surrounded by scattered pills and a broken bottle of scotch lay next to his hand. The harsh smell of alcohol was overwhelming in the small room, making Roger’s eyes water. Brian’s hair was spread out around him, making his body seem small and frail by its largeness.

 

“No,” he said with a whisper that was on the edge of a scream. He still couldn’t catch his breath. He collapsed to the ground and crawled to Brian’s side. John moved with an enviable collected competency and picked up a few of the pills to examine them.

 

He was almost afraid to touch Brian and find that his skin was cold and rigid, but he pushed through the lingering trepidation and gathered the other man into his arms. His body felt cold compared to the feverish heat that was making sweat bead Roger’s hairline, but nothing approaching the chill of death.

 

Brian’s eyes fluttered open and gazed blearily up at him. Roger nearly dropped the other man but was stopped by the fact that Brian’s eyes were not empty and dead. His pupils were dilated and unfocused and looked all too human. A weak human with a fragile mortality. His mouth worked as though he was trying to say something. John knelt next to them and felt for Brian’s pulse in his pale, blue-lined wrist.

 

“He’s alive,” Roger choked out, even as Brian’s eyes drifted closed again and his dead weight lay achingly in Roger’s arms. Suddenly, it struck him that there had been a real possibility that Brian could have _not_ been alive. There was still a possibility that he could die. He felt helpless, as helpless as he had felt watching the flesh melt from Freddie’s bones, as helpless as he had felt these last months watching Brian’s long, slow slide.

 

Dimly, through the roaring in his head, he heard John’s voice coming from the master bedroom. He hadn’t noticed that John had left their side. “Yes, we have a medical emergency…a drug overdose…I am not sure, a mixture…yes, weak, but there…”

 

Roger stopped listening. Roger could almost feel the guitarist slipping farther away, his breathing becoming slower and shallower. “Brian!” he called again, desperately. “Brian, you have to hold on. Don’t leave us…don’t leave me!”

 

Time seemed to be behaving strangely. He could have sworn he had been calling for Brian only a few moments before there was the sound of a door banging and then heavy footsteps pounding up the stairs. Roger was vaguely aware of John trying to pull him away from Brian, but he clung to him like a drowning man.

 

Brian’s head lolled back and Roger shook him, desperately. “No! I promised…Brian, no, I fucking _promised…_ ”

 

Finally, a few pairs of large, strong hands joined John’s and managed to wrench him away from Brian’s limp body. As the cluster of serious-looking people in uniform blocked his view of his bandmate, he collapsed into a ragged heap on the floor. The colorful pills scattered across the floor blurred in his vision and contrasted starkly with Brian’s long, white hand lying stretched out and lifeless between two paramedics. He closed his eyes, the memories of a promise made to a dying man and another trip taken too late whirling through his head.

 

***


	11. Chapter 11

**September 1991**

_How would it be if you were standing in my shoes?_

_Can't you see that it's impossible to choose?_

_No, there's no making sense of it_

_Every way I go, I'm bound to lose_

 

 

 

I looked out of the car window and marveled at the difference that a week made. Last week there had been a few paparazzi lingering in the vicinity of Garden Lodge, their vans and scooters cluttering the street parking of the surrounding block. Now I watched the disorderly mass of vehicles that completely blocked the road, a few police cars trying to restore order and a veritable tent city set up on the sidewalk against the dark brown brick wall surrounding the house. As soon as the approaching limo was spotted, it caused a ripple of excitement to flow through the crowd which contracted and then began to flow towards us.

 

“I’m not sure that I can get us much closer,” the driver called back to us, interrupting my thoughts. “Whadda ya want me to do?”

 

John and I looked at each other. I didn’t particularly want to venture out into that crowd of rabid journalists…or ‘journalists’…but I couldn’t see a way through the crowd for the car either. I felt like throwing a temper tantrum and whining that it shouldn’t be this hard to visit one’s sick friend. Meanwhile, the snarl of traffic remained, taunting us.

 

John queried tentatively, “Maybe if we circle around to the other side?”

 

Veronica squeezed his knee. “I called Brian before we left.” I raised my eyebrows and John whipped his head around towards her in astonishment. She shrugged. “He’s going to send an escort out to meet us.”

 

 _Thank God for Veronica’s level-headedness and planning._ I leaned back in my seat and tried to ignore the people around the car as I studied the wall blocking most of the view of the house. The impassive fortification betrayed none of the emotions that filled that house. I hadn’t been by in a week and a nagging sense of guilt tightened my chest. Honestly, it was getting harder and harder to come here. The last time I had been fighting back tears the whole visit and finally Freddie had gotten frustrated and snapped, “Fuck it, darling, come back when you can manage not to upset the both of us.” I made a renewed vow to try harder.

 

We didn’t have to wait long. Only a few minutes had passed when the green door in the wall swung open. Immediately, the photographers’ cameras started flashing, but to their verbal disappointment, the only one who stepped out was a burly man in a black turtleneck.

 

“I don’t recognize that bodyguard,” John commented, offhandedly, as we watched the tall, rough-looking man fighting his way through the pack of photographers. I was impressed that he didn’t lash out as yet another camera flash went off in his face. I didn’t possess that sort of self-control. Especially around the media.

 

“They’ve had to cycle some of the staff,” Veronica replied calmly. “Someone keeps leaking things to the press. Routine crap about Freddie’s care that no-one needs to know. Peter isn’t sure who it is, so they haven’t been keeping anyone on long…outside the trusted old guard, of course.”

 

John and I looked at her in shock. I had been religiously avoiding the tabloids, but thought that somebody should have let me know about this. John looked as though he felt the same way. “How do you know?” he asked his wife incredulously.

 

“Brian tells me things sometimes,” she replied, neutrally, carefully avoiding our gaze and looking out the car window at the crowd.

 

“What kinds of things?” I burst out.

 

“Things like that. Bothersome details that he doesn’t want to trouble anyone else with.” She paused. “Personal stuff.”

 

“He talks to me too!” I defended myself. The truth was that Brian hardly talked to me at all anymore. I had just thought that he wasn’t talking to anyone.

 

“I am sure he does, Roger,” she said, laying a soothing hand on my shoulder.

 

“Hmph,” I snorted, unmollified. We were interrupted by the bodyguard reaching the car door and cracking it open.

 

“Are you ready?” he asked as the press of people around the car grew greater. “I will clear a path so stick close behind me. It is going to be a bit rough once they figure out who you are.”

 

“Okay, let’s do this,” I replied with a shrug.

 

We stumbled after the man in a blur of shoving arms and bright lights. I couldn’t imagine doing this every time I wanted to leave or return to my home. There was no chance to compose ourselves, I was sure the photos must have captured the most ridiculous expressions on our stunned faces. Finally, we arrived at the wall, dazed and out of breath.

 

Brian was waiting for us by the garden gate. As soon as the gathered paparazzi caught a glimpse of him when the bodyguard opened the door, it seemed as though the intensity of flashes picked up. Before I could completely register the blinding lights, we were through the door and into the relative peacefulness of Garden Lodge. Brian was staring at the back of the green door as though he could still see the waiting photographers, circling like so many vultures. The expression on his face reminded me that while it may be quieter in here, there was still precious little peace to be found. There was a pinched exhaustion about him, his eyes were dark circle-lined smudges in his tight white face.

 

John must have noted what I had. “Brian…” he said, tentatively, reaching out a hand to our bandmate.

 

Brian flinched away from John’s hand. “It’s nothing,” he said swiftly and smiled at us. Any pain and weakness that he had allowed creep into his eyes was gone, replaced by a glassy wall of politeness.

 

I tried not to take the barricade that Brian had put up personally. If he wanted to look strong in front of us, I supposed that it was his own business. I just wished he trusted us—okay, me—enough to take advantage of the support we were offering. I was afraid that once everyone was no longer concentrating on the needs of Freddie, it would be too late to take care of Brian’s.

 

“Do you think the media is getting worse?” Brian asked. “I haven’t been out lately.”

 

The garden was a riot of fall blooms as we all walked up the winding path to the house’s back door. The bright yellows and whites of the chrysanthemums contrasted cheerfully against the deep purple-red of the Japanese maple trees. Pansies turned their harlequin faces up to catch the last of the afternoon sunshine. And yet somehow, all I noticed were the drifts of decaying leaves in the flowerbeds and floating on the koi pond. I knew that those subtle signs of neglect were more than just indication of the season, they were signs that Freddie was not well. I thought of the crowd gathering outside, eager to capitalize on a stranger’s tragedy just as they had on all the smaller dramas of our lives—our falling in and out of love, our clothes, our interview missteps.

 

“Fucking bastards,” I snarled. “There’s more of them alright. I swear they can smell calamity coming.”

 

“Roger!” Veronica exclaimed as Brian ushered us inside. I wasn’t sure if she was more shocked at my language or the casual mention that things weren’t as fine as we liked to pretend.

 

“It’s alright, Ronnie,” Brian said with a weak smile. “I would have said the same. They _are_ bastards.” Veronica reached out and squeezed his hand. We settled ourselves in the parlor. I noted how aggressively clean the room seemed, despite Veronica’s aspersions, at least some of the staff seemed to be putting in extra effort.

 

“How is Freddie doing?” John asked. I directed my attention back to the small talk.

 

Brian bit his lip. “Today is a good day…there haven’t been a lot of good days lately.”

 

“That’s good,” John said encouragingly. “Lucid? Not in too much pain?”

 

I had to stop myself from laughing at John’s doctor voice. I felt as though we had all been so serious for ages now. I longed to crack a joke to diffuse some of the tension but I knew that it would only earn me the disapproving glares of the assembled company. “Yeah,” said Brian. “He wants to talk to everyone today. Mary was up for a while earlier…” Brian trailed off and seemed to be lost in his thoughts. Perhaps remembering his own talk with Freddie. I wondered what they had discussed. The awkward silence stretched on until John cleared his throat and shifted in his chair.

 

“Oh God, where are my manners?” Brian’s voice was a little flat and forced. He glanced around the parlor vaguely. “I don’t know where everybody is. Would you like some tea? I can get it.”

 

John and I opened our mouths to decline, I for one was horrified at the sight of Brian so aimless and helpless. Veronica put a restraining hand on John’s arm. “We would love some tea, Brian. Can I help you make it?”

 

Brian looked at her gratefully. “Thanks, Ronnie.”

 

As they went off to the kitchen together, I studied John perched awkwardly on the edge of one of Freddie’s antique chairs. The bloody things were as uncomfortable as they were expensive and made their unlucky occupant terrified the entire time they sat there that they were about to spill on it and face the wrath of Freddie. John attempted to hide a yawn behind his hand.

 

“You look tired, John,” I said. I could relate. I hadn’t been sleeping much lately, troubled by my overactive thoughts and strange, nonsensical dreams.

 

“I have been tag-teaming with Mary and Brian around the clock. Freddie wakes up at odd hours and doesn’t want to be alone. Who can blame him?” John pursed his lips and shift in the chair again. “But Brian’s right, there haven’t been a lot of good days lately.”

 

I felt a pang of guilt. “John, I…”

 

“Oh, please don’t apologize, Roger. I _want_ to do it. It’s my last chance…” John stumbled over his words and a pained look crossed his face. “Well, I really don’t mind at all is the point.”

 

“Fuck!” The expletive echoed from the kitchen. I half-stood up and then, choosing to ignore John’s look of warning, went over to the archway joining the two rooms and peered in discretely.

 

A teacup was lying in pieces all over the counter top. Brian was sucking on a finger, blood streaming down his wrist. He looked up at Ronnie and seemed to crumple in on himself, the façade crumbling down as quickly as he had erected it when we came. His eyes welled up a little, but he blinked rapidly and maintained dry eyes.

 

“It’s okay, Brian,” Veronica was saying, gently, pulling Brian’s wrist to her and pressing a dishcloth to the wound. She applied pressure to the cut with the practiced ease that only a mother of four boys can muster in an emergency.

 

“Oh shit, it just slipped. Bloody hell, it was one of his favorites.” Brian was trying to gather up the fragments of the cup one-handed, even as Veronica kept his wounded hand trapped.

 

“Brian. Freddie isn’t going to care about one broken teacup,” she said, a hint of scolding tinging her words.

 

Brian looked up at the ceiling and exhaled forcefully as he blinked back tears again. “It’s just…it’s really hard right now, you know?” he said, his voice cracking.

 

Neither Veronica nor I thought that we were talking about smashed china anymore. “I know,” Veronica murmured.

 

“Am I a terrible person for wanting it all to be over?”

 

“Oh, no, Brian.” A terrible look of sympathy and pity came over Veronica’s face but Brian was not watching her. “Don’t say that.”

 

“You’re right, you know.” Brian was gazing off over Ronnie’s shoulder. At first I thought he would see me, but then I realized he wasn’t looking at anything at all. Nothing in this world, anyway. “I should be treasuring every second. Every second.” He repeated the words like a mantra.

 

Ronnie looked up at him worriedly. “Let’s go back to the others now. It will cheer you up. John wrote something for Freddie and he wants you to hear it, that’ll be nice, huh?”

 

Brian looked at her strangely, as though he was just remembering she was there. “I wrote a song for him too.”

 

“I know, Brian.” Ronnie looked under the cloth and saw that the wound had clotted and dried. She carefully cleaned the dried blood from Brian’s finger and threw the ruined cloth out. “It was on the last album. ‘My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies’…it was lovely.”

 

Brian didn’t seem to hear her. “’Empty spaces, what are we living for? The show must go on…the show must go on…” Brian whispered.

 

I crept away from the kitchen, suddenly unwilling to witness any more. John looked at me curiously but I just shook my head. It was lucky that I chose that moment to stop spying because as soon as I sat down, Veronica came bustling out of the kitchen carrying the tea things trailed by Brian.

 

“Here we are now,” she said with false levity, setting the tray down gently.

 

The others busied themselves with getting their tea ready. The bright crimson of blood against the fragile porcelain shards flashed in my mind and abruptly I knew I couldn’t stomach any of the tea or biscuits. Veronica seemed to notice me sitting there motionless.

 

“Roger, why don’t you go on up? John and I will talk to Brian for a while.” I knew what Ronnie was implying and I hated it. We all knew what the end was getting closer. I for one wasn’t ready to say any goodbyes.

 

I climbed the stairs apprehensively, rehearsing normal, relaxed expressions. I found that it was easiest to reminisce with Freddie, it helped keep both our minds off of the things that were happening in the present. I had come up with a few good stories by the time I reached his bedroom door.

 

Phoebe came bustling through the door just as I reached for the door handle. He was carrying a barely touched tray of food which swayed precariously when we nearly collided. I reflexively put out a hand to steady it.

 

“Sorry, Roger. That was a close one,” he said with a small smile.

 

“No worries.” Phoebe looked just as tired as John. “Oh, just a head’s up. Brian broke a teacup downstairs. You might want to bring a bandage or something. Ronnie stopped the worst of the bleeding.”

 

Phoebe shook his head in exasperation. “I leave that man alone for one minute…”

 

I smiled at him crookedly. “Sorry, mate.” He shook his head again and headed down the stairs. I went to open the door for the second time, more cautiously, but I needn’t have bothered. The room was empty now except for the sole occupant of the big king-sized bed. I stood there awkwardly in the doorway for a moment as I took in the sight that grimly greeted me.

 

I don’t know if you have ever had a puppy or kitten or visited people who just got one. When they are so young, it is as if you can almost see them growing in front of your eyes. If you go away for a week or so, the difference in their size when you come back is shocking. This was just like that, but in reverse.

 

A week ago, Freddie had looked frail, a week ago, Freddie had seemed weak and tired. Now he looked like little more than a ghost of a skeleton. His hand resting on the duvet barely made a dent in the down comforter. The fire in the grate was built up to a roaring blaze that made the enclosed space swelteringly hot and yet Freddie was still buried under a mound of blankets. He wasn’t wearing any makeup anymore and his skin looked papery and translucent as though his body was a mere husk of a man, ready for a gust of wind to come along and blow it away.

 

The sound of me softly closing the door roused him and he blinked up at me hazily. Someone had built up a huge stack of pillows so that he could sit up almost normally without expending any effort. His eyes were unfocused and shot through with crimson and for a moment I did not know how to act or what to say. I forced myself to relax and took a step forward.

 

“Roger? Is that you?” He sighed. “My fucking eyesight is really starting to go, but I recognize your hair.”

 

“Oh, sorry,” I mumbled, going to his side and nearly tripping over the edge of the rug in my haste. “John and Veronica and I came over to visit. They are downstairs with Brian.”

 

“How is Brian doing?” Freddie asked quietly and I was distracted enough by the question to wrench my attention from his alarming appearance. I thought of the broken cup and the brief glance beneath the surface Brian had afforded me. What must it be like to be confronted with this living skeleton every day? The thought came into my mind unbidden and I immediately felt sick for thinking it. _It is still just Freddie_ , I told myself.

 

“Not as well as he pretends.”

 

Freddie sighed and leaned back even deeper into his pile of pillows. “When did you get to be so insightful, dear?” he whispered.

 

 _When I started overanalyzing every move you, I or Brian made for hidden meaning. When I started having to think twice about every move I made and every word I said._ “Oh, yeah. A bloody shrink alright,” I snorted.

 

“More than you give yourself credit for,” Freddie breathed.

 

I blushed and again found myself at a loss for words. Freddie was looking at me but seemed to be staring right through me, thinking unknowable thoughts.

 

“I wish he would ask for help. We would do whatever he needs. But he is too damn stubborn to admit this is more than he can handle alone.” Freddie smiled grimly at my words. I felt a flash of unease. “Not that you are a burden, of course.”

 

Freddie started to shake his head and then broke into a violent coughing fit. I waited for it to subside, torn between acting as if nothing was wrong and offering an assistance that I had no idea how to provide. “Of course I am a fucking _burden_ ,” Freddie croaked. “Just look at me! Now for any other reason I would relish being waited on like this, but when you are _dying_ people tiptoe around you like mice. It makes me want to get up and slap them. And I can’t even fucking do that anymore.”

 

I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all despite the grimness of the subject matter. Freddie smiled weakly at my laughter and relaxed the tension that had crept into his ruined body. “Freddie, I think this ordeal has changed everyone but you.”

 

“Oh, I have changed too. God knows.” He sighed again and took a few labored breaths. “Do you remember when Brian was sick?”

 

“Yes, of course,” I replied, surprised. I wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

 

“We had known each other for what, five or six years? John for three?” he asked. I nodded. “We had been touring and working together a lot by then and it felt like we knew each other well, but how well did we really know each other? I mean, compared to now?”

 

I smiled. I felt like I was still learning things about my bandmates that surprised me, but I knew what he meant. Back then we clung to superficial facts about the others, John’s least favorite color, Freddie’s little habits upon checking into a hotel, Brian’s favorite foods. It made us feel like we really knew each other well, but we still deep down realized we were little more than strangers who had been thrown together by chance. “Not that well. For example, it would be years until I had weaseled any facts about his sex life out of Deaky.”

 

“Oh, fuck off, darling,” Freddie chuckled, shoving my arm away. I laughed along with him and I could almost forget he was sick, it was so like the old days. Only the weakness of his push betrayed the truth. Slowly, Freddie’s face became serious again. “When Brian was sick, I was so scared.” He took a deep breath, slowly as not to induce another coughing fit. “I was terrified he wouldn’t be able to play anymore…or that…he would—he would _die_ before I ever got the chance to tell him how I felt about him. I remember staying up, frozen in fear on my bed, cursing sickness and death and decay.

 

“It shocked me,” Freddie said, with frank vulnerability. His eyes flicked up to meet mine. “To be so upset by the prospect of losing him. I thought that what I had was some small thing—a crush or a desire for a stupid fling. I hadn’t said anything to him when I thought that because, first, this was _Brian_ we were talking about and second, even then, even as stupid as I am in relationships, I had an inkling that one night stands wouldn’t do great things for the band’s dynamics.” He quirked a half smile at me, I rolled my eyes. “…and then he got sick. And I realized that it wasn’t a silly little crush on a boy who looked good playing the guitar. When I discovered that, I almost confessed to him a million times….” Freddie lapsed into silence, his breathing labored.

 

“The point is that I didn’t tell him how I truly felt, wasn’t honest with him then—really, _ever_ , I suppose—because I wanted that drama of a deathbed declaration and…then Brian got better.” Freddie shrugged and bit his lower lip which was chapped and bleeding. “What is it about death that makes us brave enough to finally be truthful?”

 

“The truth is scary,” I said, feeling out of my depth, but also that Freddie was really trying to say something important. “We don’t want to face someone every day knowing that they know all our secrets. If someone can take that secret to the grave…” I trailed off. I got the impression that he was only half-listening to me anyway.

 

“You know, this has all been such a long, fucking drawn out affair,” he said abruptly. “I have been dragged backwards and forwards through the stages of grief so many times I am not sure where I have ended up. Acceptance?” He snorted. “Maybe. But right now, this moment, I have come to a place, an epiphany of sorts. I’m not afraid anymore.” He turns his face towards me and I could see that his words were true. There was no trace of fear there. “Roger, I don’t care what happens to me after I die. I don’t care what anyone will think of me, my fucking legacy or whatever. Except…I do worry about Brian.” Freddie’s voice broke over Brian’s name and he pressed his fragile fingers to the corners of his watering eyes.

 

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tell him that Brian would be fine, to offer empty platitudes, but I had seen what Brian’s attempts to hold himself together looked like now and I didn’t believe that to be true. I didn’t want to bring him lies, not now, not in this place.

 

The silence stretched on, making me shift uncomfortably until Freddie broke it. “Remember a thousand years ago when you told me you were attracted to a man?” His voice was barely above a whisper.

 

It was not what I was expecting to hear. “Hell, Fred,” I blurted out in shock. “I’m surprised you even remember that.”

 

“Whatever happened, Rog?” he pressed.

 

“Nothing happened,” I said with a sharp exhale. This conversation was making me overly emotional and the memory of that long ago conversation made my eyes prick with threatening tears. Freddie had been so vital then, overflowing with ambition and drive. _Don’t think about overflowing_ , I thought, blinking back hard. “Nothing at all.”

 

Freddie watched me, unblinking, his bloodshot eyes drilling into me. I didn’t know how well he could really see me but I knew that it felt as though he looked deep into my soul. “Who was it? Will you tell me now?”

 

I paused. _What is it about death that makes us brave enough to finally be truthful?_ Freddie’s words rang in my mind. “Brian. It was Brian.”

 

Freddie looked away, staring out the window, while all the ironies of that sunk in. “All this time?”

 

I opened my mouth to deny that I still felt anything at all, but something in Freddie’s face told me not to lie, told me that he needed to hear even the painful truths. Especially the painful truths. “Every single fucking second from then until now.”

 

“You’ve hid it well.”

 

My breath escaped me in a humorless laugh. “I know.”

 

“Why?”

 

The question struck me. I had spent so much time wondering why I was attracted to Brian in the first place that I had spared little thought for why I needed to hide it. Of course, at first I was afraid of rejection, afraid of awkwardness in the band when Brian didn’t reciprocate. Later I didn’t confess because Brian was with Freddie. Why did that stop me? Not for Brian, if he had returned my affection, he would have been able to move on from Freddie.

 

I looked up at him. I looked past the gaunt skeleton of a man who was a stranger to me, past the angles of his face I still could not recognize and into his eyes. His eyes were the same despite the broken vessels, the dark circles framing them. They were dark and shadowed but burning with an inner fire that had driven an effeminate foreign kid with funny teeth to become the most iconic frontman in the world, the flame that had powered a millionaire slowly wasting away to make one more album that he would never perform and never profit from. They were the eyes that have compelled me to commit my most shameful deeds and have been the unwavering believer in all the true and good things I hoped, but did not know, I could accomplish.

 

“For you, Fred. For your sake,” I murmured with a sigh of bittersweet epiphany.

 

Freddie’s lips parted slightly in a small ‘oh’ of surprise. I held his gaze for a breathless moment and then he turned his head away, blinking rapidly. We sat in silence for a long time. Freddie seemed to be thinking through something, twisting the sheets in his frail hands. I was content to sit in the quiet as I had nothing more to say. I wondered why my motivation for secrecy had surprised him more than my confession of love for his boyfriend. I would think it would be a shock finding out the one you were fucking on the side had a secret thing for your boyfriend. It was like a fucked up game of pin the tail on the donkey. None of us had ended up quite where we meant to.

 

Finally, he turned back to me and his face was the picture of composure and determination. Freddie gripped my arm, stronger than I thought possible and said, urgently, “I want you to promise me something.”

 

“Anything, Fred,” I swore vehemently.

 

“You need to take care of Brian.”

 

I looked at him in surprise. “Well, of course. We have always tried to take care of him…”

 

“No, not like that. Not like me, not like John.” Freddie paused and panted painfully for a moment, forcing measured breaths from his ruined lungs. I sat there, uncertain of what I had said to upset him.

 

“Freddie, you are going to get better,” I whispered and even as the words passed my lips, I knew that I did not believe them. The words were hollow, husks of hope rattling on the cold wind of reality. Freddie cut his eyes at me with a glimmer of that old sass that had made him such a bitch to argue with.

 

“Fuck it, Rog. Let’s not act stupid about this. I’m dying. You know it. I know it. Brian knows it but is trying his damnedest to deny it and is falling apart at the seams as a result. I need you to take care of him when I am gone. To make sure that he doesn’t do something stupid and Brian-y like refuse to get out of bed for a month or smash his guitar up and swear off music or…or,” Freddie gestured wildly, searching for words. “…well, refuse to see the good thing that is right under his nose.”

 

I heard his words but didn’t quite grasp what he meant. He gritted his teeth, clenching and unclenching his fist and then went on. “I want someone to make him be happy again. I used to be able to do that, oh, about a million years ago—but I always ended up getting distracted somehow.” Freddie sighed and looked out the window. I felt a warm flush of regret creep up my neck. I knew I wasn’t the only distraction in Freddie’s life, but I could have made more of an effort to not be one at all. Freddie looked back at me with his jaw set. “I want him to love again.”

 

What he was getting after hit me all in a rush. I felt myself blanch. “Freddie, are you saying what I think you are saying?” I said carefully.

 

“Yes…go and with my blessing or whatever, child.” Freddie waved a hand imperiously.

 

I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the suggestion. “Let me get this straight. You want me to date your boyfriend? That is your deathbed wish?”

 

“When you put it like that…” He frowned. “Goddamn it, Roger, this was supposed to be a touching and heartfelt moment…”

 

I snorted. “What if Brian isn’t onboard with your little scheme? What if _he_ doesn’t want _me_? What if he doesn’t want anyone?”

 

“Brian doesn’t know what’s good for him, dear.” He paused and seemed to actually consider my question. “I don’t think attraction will be a problem. You two are obviously good friends, that’s more than half of it, you know. And you are a pretty man, I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t entertained at least a little fantasy…”

 

I shook my head, “Fred, this is so wrong to be talking about like this. So wrong and weird.”

 

“You know, you’re right. We better not let Brian know we discussed this. Nobody likes a matchmaker, much less one that is dead. Promise?”

 

I fell back against the chair, helpless once again in the face of his forceful personality. “Fred…”

 

“You promised me!” His voice was strained. “It’s not like I am asking you to do anything that you don’t already want to do.”

 

It’s funny how Freddie has this talent for motivating people by finding that thing they are most ashamed of and telling them it’s okay. “Temptress,” I whisper, but know that I have already lost the fight. As if I ever really tried to win. Freddie smiled and again I saw a flash of his old self. Oh, yes, Freddie Mercury, sin on two legs, he knew how to make people stumble. Well, I couldn’t speak for everyone, but definitely me.

 

 “I don’t envy your task,” Freddie said, flippantly, impatient with the somber mood. “He is so tall because the powers that be thought they could stuff a little more stubbornness and pig-headedness in there at the last second. He’ll have himself twisted up so badly he won’t know up from down. Wrong from right.”

 

I thought about Brian and knew that Freddie was right. _You know, for once I would just like things to be bloody_ easy. _Is that too much to ask?_

 

 ***

 


	12. Chapter 12

 

_I am lost._

_My mind feels sluggish, ringing with the aftershock of some great explosion, so I can’t seem to remember how long I have been wandering, but it has been long enough to make the jolt of each step reverberate through my sore and tired feet, echoing the pounding of my heart. It is odd, I think, that I should be plagued by blisters when the ground in this strange place has only passing relation to the plane at which my feet fall and while I am certain that I am not nude, I can’t quite seem to ascertain the nature of my clothing or shoes. The only thing that I can be certain of is that I need to find a way out of this place. A surge of adrenaline that is the last remaining vestige of my body’s ancient self-preservation urge impresses upon me the importance of escape. If I have a body. The ghost of adrenaline, then, coursing through the ghost of my body. With each passing minute and every painful footfall, however, that impulse gets weaker and weaker. I try to think of why I ever thought it was so important._

_If only it wasn’t so terribly dark. I am convinced that the way out would be easy to find if I could just see. A nagging suspicion whispers that I am veering off course or going in circles. Also, eerie, cold tendrils keep brushing against my face and hands, making me hesitate and stumble. A lingering vertigo keeps me cautiously placing each foot as though I am about to pitch off the edge of some great cliff. The way that I have been walking is steep and my feet keep catch on invisible tangles and spectral crevasses.  I am so impossibly tired. Finally, I cannot bear it any longer. I pause for a moment and then turn away from the direction that feels right, stumbling slightly as the ease of the downhill slope surprises me._

_I nearly sob from relief at the ease of the new way. A breeze picks up and stirs my hair. I wonder if I am traveling faster than I think. Faintly at first, and then with increasing volume and urgency, I begin to hear a noise coming from up the hill I had been climbing. It takes a while to realize that the noise is neither the roar of total silence nor a figment of my imagination. The noise provokes a terrible sense of anxiety inside of me, I feel both compelled to go towards the noise to discover what is making it and dread at the thought of the long, painful climb._

_I take a few, stumbling steps upwards. I realize that the noise is a voice or many voices. I climb a bit further, my body screaming at me to stop, feeling as though it weighs ten times its normal mass. The voice is so very familiar. I begin to walk back uphill in earnest now, the need to understand the voice overriding my physical complaints. Each movement is still a struggle and my heart now seems so sluggish that my blood and its vital cargo of oxygen barely reaches my muscles. I push my deadened limb into movement by a wrenching force of will. I begin to feel as though I am outside of my body, controlling it as a recalcitrant automaton. The voice’s meaning and owner are right on the edge of my understanding. I think that they are calling my name. At one point I am sure that it is Freddie. At another, it seems so alien that I am certain that it does not belong to any human. I trip and struggle to regain my balance. Belatedly, I become aware that the ground is level and covered with soft green grass and there is light enough to see. As I fall to my knees, whatever strange consciousness this is slipping away from me at last, I realize that the voice belongs to Roger and he is screaming my name over and over._

**April 1993**

_I work hard every day of my life_

_I work till I ache my bones_

_At the end, I take home my hard earned pay all on my own_

_I get down on my knees and I start to pray_

 

Roger turned the key in the ignition and the car quickly rumbled to a stop. In the stillness, the irregular, quick beating of his heart became all too clear and rapped out a double time tattoo in the depths of his ears. He could feel a cold sweat gathering on his hairline. He stared at the modest little house with its overly neat privet and the few neighbors looking curiously through curtains at his too fancy car. A rush of a feeling that could not be déjà vu because he knew all too well why the situation was familiar surged through him. _I have been sitting nervously in cars outside of houses too bloody much lately._ He sighed and slowly got out of the car, the creaking in his joints making him feel like an old man.

 

The last thing that he wanted to do was to walk the short distance to the door and go inside that house. Half-formed plans of how he could get out of it flashed through his mind, each one reluctantly discarded for its ludicrousness. _I could call instead. It’s only been a couple of days, I could come by next week, no-one would fault me for that. I should have taken John up on his offer to come with me. I can call and cancel and come back later with him._ In the end, he found that his feet had taken over from his unwilling brain and had managed to propel him up the walk and nearly to the door while he waffled. He looked at the cheerful welcome mat, trying to convince himself that the little house was not as menacing as it seemed.

 

Roger finally raised his hand and pressed the doorbell. He heart seemed to leap up into his throat and attempt to choke him as he heard the faint sounds of the bell and someone stirring from inside the house.

 

Brian’s mother opened the door. Roger had tried to prepare himself for this meeting but still felt himself start to wither under her impassive and weary visage.

 

“Hello, Roger,” she said, mildly. “Come in, I’ve put on the kettle.”

 

“Ah, Mrs. May, that is, you needed have bothered…”

 

“No, Roger,” Ruth chided, stern rebuke slipping through her calm voice. “I don’t know everything about this mess that’s happened, but I suspect that you were in the middle of it so I do believe you owe me the courtesy of sitting down and talking to me over a cup of tea.”

 

Blushing hotly, he meekly followed her into the living room. Brian’s parents had always been able to make him feel like a little kid whose misbehavior had definitely been noted. _Even now that I am forty-three goddamn years old._ He suspected that it had been the same for Brian.

 

Roger sat down uneasily on the sofa in the front room while Ruth bustled about the kitchen. Before he could quite compose himself, she emerged with the teapot, two cups and a plate of biscuits. He recognized the tea set as one that Brian had picked out for his mother on one of their later tours of Japan. Roger didn’t dare look at Ruth as he poured the tea for both of them and then his drank his too quickly out of nervousness, the hot liquid burning his throat.

 

“How are your children?” she inquired politely.

 

Roger looked up at her quickly, not expecting the small talk. “Ah, umm, fine. They are enjoying school more than I think they ought, maybe they get that from their mother.”

 

“And how is their mother? Do you see them often?”

 

“Well, you know, I try to as often as I can.” Roger felt the urge to defend himself. “Lately…”

 

Ruth shook her head ruefully and twisted her teacup on its saucer. “Divorce is hard on kids,” she said with a touch of pity and judgment.

 

“Considering it was basically a marriage of convenience for the sake of the tykes’ inheritance, I don’t think it was the divorce _per se…_ ” Ruth shot him a look and he withered. He was strongly reminded why he lost touch with his own parents. He had grown rather accustomed to having no critique of his admittedly non-traditional lifestyle outside of the odd tabloid smear. _God, Brian…and Freddie…had to face this every visit home. She means it with love, but still…_

 

Ruth sighed. “I didn’t mean to badger you on your parenting, Roger.”

 

“It’s alright. I suppose I deserve it,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh.

 

“It’s just this whole mess!” she burst out. “I should be angry with you. I should be angry with Brian. For letting it come to this.” She pursed her lips and suddenly looked _old_ to Roger. Mrs. May had always seemed more like a force of nature to him, ageless and steadfast. He thought about how soon this had all happened after she lost her husband. He thought about how still the little house seemed. “I _was_ angry for a long time after we were told about Freddie’s illness. I couldn’t understand how he could have done that to our son, to everyone who loved him.”

 

“I don’t think any of us can understand that.” Roger paused and reconsidered. “Maybe John. Somebody should ask him.”

 

Ruth ignored him. “Have you ever been so angry with someone that it was almost as if you hated them? But all the causes for your hate were bound up in your love for them?”

 

Roger thought about Freddie taking the one thing that he had wanted for most of his life and then he thought about a mother and her only son and him walking away from her on a pathway she couldn’t help but see as self-destructive. “No,” he replied honestly.

 

She gave a tight-lipped smile in acknowledgement of his concession. “Well, it is exhausting. In the end I forgave Brian, and Freddie. And you, Roger? You were only trying to help and so I do not think I can work up any wrath about the clumsy way you went about it.”

 

“Thank you. I think.”

 

“You are a parent, Roger. Parents want things to be easier for their kids than they were for them. This path that Brian took, music, his lifestyle…it wasn’t the easiest path by a longshot. He was smart, he could have done _so_ many things.” Her voice was filled with regret that was so strong that Roger wanted to shout, _he_ has _done so many things, great things!_ But if twenty years of seeing it with her own eyes hadn’t convinced her, nothing he said would. “We barely had time to come around to the whole rock star business…or rather the in debt and no guarantees music business…when he brings a man home. Harold had his own set of problems with that, and me…well, I always wanted more children and, failing that, I dearly wanted grandkids.” Ruth gazed off into space wistfully.

 

Roger fidgeted in his chair. He wished he was anywhere else. He had no condolences to offer anybody’s disappointed mother. “There was always adoption…” he offered lamely.

 

Ruth gave him an incredulous look. He looked away but could still feel her eyes on him as if coming to a difficult conclusion.

 

“Do you love him?”

 

His courage failed him under the strength of her scrutiny. “He is my best friend.”

 

“No,” she snapped. “Do you _love_ him?”

 

“I do,” he admitted, unable to look up from his clenched hands.

 

“I suppose I should be happy with that. Brian isn’t good at being alone…or rather, he is too good at being alone.” Roger glanced up at her and she smiled faintly. “I make us sound like impossible to please guardians of our son, huh? We tried to be accepting of Freddie, you know. Freddie…Freddie didn’t make it easy on us.”

 

Roger could imagine how the mercurial man would have reacted to a reception like this. “It was never Freddie’s way to be ingratiating.”

 

“No. Indeed not,” Ruth said with eyebrows raised. “There was much to admire about Freddie. And much that could drive one up the wall. None of it was due to him not knowing what he wanted and what he was willing to compromise on.”

 

As Ruth seemed willing to discuss Brian and Freddie’s relationship, Roger felt his curiosity peaking as his apprehension about being yelled at waned. “What was it like? When you found out about Freddie? You must have been surprised…”

 

“I always knew about Brian. Well, since the age that children start to take an interest in such things at least. Harold was shocked but fathers are less observant of their children’s hearts.” She paused, trying to sum up a series of little observations, hunches and intuitions. “Brian never seemed to take much interest in girls. Not that he took any interest in boys, back then he was more interested in his gadgets, his guitar, his telescope, all that. I wondered a bit when we met Tim, he had that same magnetism that Freddie had, but any attraction there was unrequited. When he introduced us to Freddie, I knew it was only a matter of time, if he could catch his eye. He did for a while. Longer than I thought possible.”

 

“Freddie always loved him. Only him.” Roger was surprised at the vehemence in his voice. “He was just always such a sucker for flattery.

 

Ruth acted as though she didn’t hear him. “But you, Roger. You I don’t understand. Flashy Freddie seems more your type than our Brian. I guess I just want to be certain that he isn’t some substitute now that Freddie…”

 

“No!” Roger burst out.

 

“I believe you.” Ruth sighed again. “I don’t know why, but I do.”

 

“Thank you for that,” Roger replied sincerely.

 

“I was frightened, you know. When I thought that I might lose him.” She glanced up at him almost shyly. “I am glad to have someone on my side, trying to keep him here.” Roger supposed that was as much encouragement as he was going to get. For some odd reason, he _did_ feel encouraged and almost brave enough to face the talk he was dreading most, as hard as this one had been. Ruth made a shooing motion with her hands and started to clear the tea things away. “You better go up and talk to him, then. He isn’t going to recover from this overnight. But maybe you can do a better job helping him along than I have.”

 

Roger got to his feet unsteadily and followed Ruth’s directions to the stairs. It was funny that in all his years of knowing Brian, he had never been over to his childhood home. He looked around curiously as he walked. There was little sign of Brian’s rock star career here, the appliances in the kitchen seemed a bit higher grade than he would expect for a house like this, a few knickknacks that Roger recognized as ones Brian had bought as gifts on his travels. But as far as luxurious accommodations went, Brian had apparently not bought into the old cliché of first buying a car and house for your mum once you made it big. That or his parents had refused his generosity. Roger could imagine both sides of that, how such an offer would have hurt Harold and Ruth’s pride and how their refusal would have been one more indicator of their disapproval of Brian’s lifestyle. Once again he was glad that his own parents had had his other siblings to help dilute their attention.

 

His musings had carried him up the family photo-lined stairwell and to the only room with light spilling out onto the second floor landing. He lingered in the doorway for a moment and examined the room, working on bolstering his courage.

 

Roger had never been here but the room looked familiar. It would have looked familiar to anybody who had come back to their childhood home after years away. The bookshelf was made in that sturdy, graceless way of kid’s furniture and it was half-filled with picture books and ancient art projects. The rest of the room on the shelves was filled with objects obviously stored here after being rejected from the main house over the years. Mismatched vases. Boxes of out of season women’s shoes. Tattered romance and mystery novels.

 

A bulletin board held a collection of yellowing newspaper and magazine clippings. Roger caught glimpses of headlines on Led Zeppelin, the Who and the Kinks but they were mingled with articles on astronomy and physics as well as more recent, less yellowed, pictures and stories of Queen. A cluster of family photos hung next to a peeling Smile poster above an upright piano with practice booklets still poking out from beneath the seat.

 

Reluctantly he turned his attention to the brass single bed under a small window that overlooked the garden. The bed should have made Brian look large, his feet poking through the rails of the footboard, but instead he looked crumpled in on himself, childishly frail with his pale skin nearly blending in with the white linens. A half-eaten tray of toast and soup sat on the nightstand beside him and reinforced the image of a kid staying home on a sick day.

 

Roger cleared his throat awkwardly. Brian didn’t respond and a flash of the fear he had felt holding the guitarist’s limp body paralyzed him for a moment. Then he noted the steady rise and fall of Brian’s chest and found the nerve to step into the room.

 

“Hey,” he greeted his bandmate softly.

 

“Hey,” Brian respond in a raspy croak. He didn’t turn to look at his guest but kept fixed on the ceiling in a dead-eye stare.

 

“How are you feeling?” _Slick, Rog, he obviously feels just great, huh?_ “Umm, you don’t have to talk about if you don’t want to. John sends his apologies…the kids are all sick…but he’ll be by later.”

 

Brian didn’t respond. Roger’s rambling small talk seemed to hang between them, making the drummer feel more and more awkward. Just when he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, Brian turned slightly and stared at the empty space somewhere above Roger’s head.

 

“I should have died.”

 

The words seemed to suck the air out of the room. Roger closed his eyes painfully. “Brian…”

 

 “I wasn’t trying to,” Brian said emotionlessly. Roger wondered if that was a relief or if it was more worrisome that Brian had become so careless of himself that he would allow such a thing to occur. “I was just trying to forget. Freddie…”

 

Roger couldn’t bear to hear him say the words. To hear him say that the pain of losing Freddie was enough to drive him to the edge of death. It was a problem that Roger could never solve for the man that he loved. He couldn’t bring Freddie back and he didn’t want this broken creature to throw that in his face. Before Brian could, Roger spoke the horrible words himself. “You miss him. I understand that. I can _never_ be what you’ve lost. I guess I just need to come to terms with that.”

 

Brian drew a sharp breath and sat up in the little bed abruptly. For the first time that day, he met Roger’s eyes. There was a curious mix of astonishment and desolation in his face. “Roger,” he breathed. “God, what you must think of me?”

 

“I don’t understand,” he stammered.

 

“I am some kind of monster,” Brian said as though explaining to a small child. Roger started to shake his head, although what Brian was saying still didn’t register. Brian pointed a shaking hand at him. “ _You_ miss him. _You_ love him. Everybody does. So what is wrong with me that I don’t? I’ve tried so fucking hard too.” Brian’s voice climbed as he spoke until he was nearly shouting.

 

Roger realized how wrong they had all been. “Jesus,” he swore softly.

 

“The worst part is I am relieved. I couldn’t stand it in the end, couldn’t stand _him_. How could he have done that to me, to our relationship?!” Brian’s breath caught and Roger thought he was going to start crying, but then he took a few steading gasps and went on. “And then I can hardly stand to be myself, to be someone who can think those things. Surely I deserve every horrible thing I can imagine.”

 

It all made sense now. Brian’s reaction to their fumbling relationship. His stifled anger at Freddie and Roger’s affair. His worsening efforts to cope. “You have to realize…” he began, urgently.

 

“Please don’t say that it is okay to feel these things.” Brian cut him off. “It isn’t your forgiveness I want.”

 

The words hit Roger almost like a slap. He reached out to touch his bandmate, a touch he had been avoiding with difficulty so far. “Brian, listen to me…”

 

Brian pulled away and rolled over on the bed to face the wall. “I am tired now. Can you just leave?”

 

Roger slowly lowered his hand. “Alright. But I am coming back tomorrow. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I’m not going to leave you alone. Not this time.”

 

 

 

**May 1993**

 

“It’s so beautiful here. Sometimes I wish I could just live out here in the woods away from it all,” Brian sighed, over the sounds of their feet rustling leaves and birds calling to one another. It was beautiful, Roger reflected. Spring was just beginning to ripen into summer and the woods surrounding his house had yet to mature into the dark, green foreboding tangle that they would become in the coming months. The trees were misted with the electric green of their earliest leaves and the soft, warm sunlight filtered through to the ground. He took a deep breath of the fragrant air, worried about the deep-seated sadness still lingering in Brian’s eyes while at the same time feeling the first stirring of hope at the tightness beginning to leave the corners of those same eyes.

 

It was incredible how they had managed to fall into some kind of rhythm, a new sort of normal. Every morning, Roger would drive over to Brian’s parent’s home and pick him up for this walk back at his place, disturbed and relieved at the same time that Brian didn’t notice the tradition trespassing on the similar one he had shared with Freddie. They would talk about little things in specific and sometimes big things too, but always in vague and general terms, still afraid to rip the half-healed scabs of old wounds.

 

“You wouldn’t last three days. You would run back home for a shower and to pick leaves out of your precious hair,” Roger snorted, easing back into their old pattern of ribbing one another.

 

Brian looked at him in shock, as though he had forgotten how to react to a joke. Roger threw him a lopsided grin and slowly the other man began to relax and hesitantly smile back. “Oh, yeah? You are just Mr. Outdoorsy, I suppose. Not minding any dirt and leaves in _your_ hair.”

 

Roger casually shoved the taller man into a holly bush on the side of the path. Brian yelped in surprise and then staggered out of the bush, hands full of leaves with which he proceeded to try to stuff down Roger’s shirt. After a brief struggle that left them both winded and gasping, it began clear that Brian’s longer reach was a key tactical advantage in leaf fights.

 

“Alright, truce! I give up. Truce!” Roger shouted, trying to catch his breath. Brian slowly dropped his remaining leaves. They stared at each other for a moment. “Um, I think you got something there.” He pointed. “In your hair. Like a twig or something.”

 

Brian put his hand to his head and then started laughing, helplessly. Roger couldn’t help but join in as deep, belly laughs started to bubble up through him. He reflected on how _good_ it felt to just laugh and see Brian laughing. It seemed like it had been ages since they had done this.

 

As their laughter subsided, they continued walking with Brian running his hands through his hair in search of errant foliage and Roger watching him and thinking hard. He had been toying with the idea of telling Brian that Freddie had made him promise ‘to take care of him.’ Brian’s confession about how he really felt after Freddie’s death had triggered the thought to break his vow of silence on the matter. Knowing what Freddie had wanted might help take a little of that shame away. _Or piss him off even more. Only one way to find out._

 

“Okay. Cards on the table,” Roger said. _It’s now or never_ , he thought. _I was stupid to keep this a secret for so long_. He wondered who he was trying to convince.

 

Brian looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?”

 

“Brian, Freddie made me promise him something. When—well, near the end. He made me promise not to tell you about it either, but fuck it, it was a mistake to promise him that.” Roger hesitated.

 

Brian was staring at him with a certain amount of trepidation. _I don’t blame him. Freddie’s ‘surprise presents’ always tended to go fifty-fifty_. “Go on,” Brian said.

 

“He wanted me to take care of you when he was gone.” Roger saw Brian’s nostrils flare in indignation over the insinuation that he couldn’t take care of himself and he rushed on. “He wanted you to find somebody to love after…” Roger faltered to a stop and they both smiled humorlessly at the accidental lyrics.

 

“ _Some_ body,” Brian said, archly.

 

“I think he had a particular person in mind,” Roger dissembled.

 

“What?”

 

“Me,” he replied helplessly, spreading his hands wide. Suddenly, all of what he had said seemed to sink in for the other man.

 

Roger had never understood the expression ‘you could have knocked him over with a feather’ until now. Brian mouth had fallen open and he was staring at Roger wide-eyed. “I…” he attempted to collect himself and failed. “I…” he turned away and pressed a hand to his temple. Roger waited for him to speak, mostly because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. “So he planned for…” Brian’s searching for words was beginning to become tinged with irritation. “I can’t believe he would do that without even mentioning it to me.” Brian paused and then spoke with realization, under his breath and mostly to himself, “But he did, didn’t he?” The taller man whirled back to Roger, who took a step back, startled. “You! This whole time you’ve only been doing this because of some kind of fucked up promise? You told me you…fuck, Roger!”

 

Roger was caught off guard by the sudden change in track. “No! Brian, I swear to you it wasn’t like that!”

 

“And I was naïve enough to think I wasn’t just another piece of ass to you. God, all this time I’ve felt so _guilty_. I’ve been so _stupid…_ ”

 

“Brian, please.” Roger reached for his hand.

 

“ _Don’t touch me!_ ” Brian snarled.

 

Roger pulled back his hand as though he had been burned. He turned away and stared to pace, kicking leaves from his path, angrily. He racked his brain for a way to convince Brian of what he felt, that he wasn’t a pity fuck or just another conquest.

 

“Do you remember that little club in Epsom we used to play?”

 

Brian looked at him suspiciously from beneath his brows. “Yeah,” he allowed.

 

“I fell in love with you there. It was the way that you played. I was waiting for the courage to tell you, the right moment, some sign that you could possibly reciprocate.” He shook his head. “And then Freddie swept in. How could I compete with that? And so I watched, and waited, and fell more in love with you with every passing year.”

 

“It doesn’t make sense.” Brian held out his hands helplessly. “It’s too much to…”

 

The disbelief lingering on Brian’s face hit hard. He pressed on. “You say that every relationship I have ever had has been shallow and superficial. That’s true. How could I have a deep and meaningful relationship when I already had one, albeit one-sided, with you?”

 

“I still don’t understand how you could love someone like me so much…so long…”

 

“Brian, don’t you understand? I love the way you play guitar, passionate and yet with an intellectual precision that makes you fiercer than the wildest thrashing. I love the way you get so worked up and involved with causes and I love you when you slip up and cheat with a bacon sandwich. I love how confident you are about your songwriting, your music and your intellectual prowess but that you have no idea of how lovely you are. How desirable you are.” Roger took a steadying breath. Brian was biting his lip in that way that drove him crazy. “It makes me want to convince you of it over and over again. I love that people who only know you on stage or in interviews think you would never get in a row, but that you fight like a tiger when anyone threatens what you want. I love the color that you get, way up high on those pretty cheekbones of yours, when you are in love. I want you to look at me that way.”

 

Roger wanted to believe that he saw Brian’s eyes soften as he listened to Roger’s declaration. He could almost convince himself he did. “I want to believe you, Roger. God knows. It’s just that…” Brian inhaled sharply through his teeth. “I find it all so hard to understand. And I’ve been burned before.”

 

“Can we just start over? I’ve fucked things up, you’ve fucked things up. Can we just forget everything that we’ve said to each other since the funeral right up to this moment? Please?” Roger knew he had a face made for effective pleading. He widened his eyes just slightly and peered up at the taller man through his eyelashes.

 

Brian looked at him with a shade of pity in his eyes. Roger felt nearly dizzy with the unfamiliarity of that. “Those things have happened.”

 

“Yeah, but the way we handled the things that happened leaves a lot to be desired.”

 

“I don’t know, Roger…”

 

Roger stopped dead on the path and stuck out his hand towards the other man. Brian looked at it, confused, and took a half-step backward. “Hi, Brian, I am Roger. I use to play drums in a band.” Brian rolled his eyes and Roger let his hand fall back to his side with a sigh. “You might have heard of them, Queen. Actually, funny story, we are trying to release one last album and need a guitar player. Maybe you know one who is free.”

 

“Roger,” Brian said seriously. “You know I can’t do that yet.”

 

“Well, I had to fucking try, huh?”

 

Brian exhaled. He turned to face Roger, crossing his arms over his chest, before restlessly uncrossing them and putting his hands into his pockets. “Hi, Roger. I’m Brian. I am an actually adult who doesn’t need people planning my life from beyond the grave.” He took a shuddering breath. “But I guess I haven’t been fucking acting like it though. I’m Brian and my life has revolved around one person for so long, I’ve forgotten how to act around other people.”

 

“We can figure it out together. How about we start with not acting, huh?”

 

A ghost of a smile crept across Brian’s lips. “We never used to act around each other. That wasn’t that long ago, was it?”

 

“Twenty-two years ago.” Roger looked away, regretting his honesty. “For me, at least.”

 

Brian looked puzzled for a moment before his lips parted in a small ‘oh’ of revelation. He started to reach out to the other man, but reconsidered and pushed his hair from his face in a lame diversion. His fingers found a wayward leaf and he picked it out, smiling.

 

They walked in silence for a while. Roger studied the other man, looking for confirmation of things that had unconscientiously registered during the leaf fight. The dark hollows under Brian’s eyes seemed more filled out now, his skin didn’t look so tissue thin. His wrists were more than just skin covered bone although barely. A thin layer of flesh padded them. He looked pretty, in a pale pre-Raphaelite way.

 

Roger looked away from Brian before the arousal he felt creeping up could manifest. “You’re looking well. Not so—um, skeletal.”

 

“Mum makes sure I am fed. Despite any protests.” Brian wavered and then burst out, “I want to go home! Don’t get me wrong, my mother is great, she is a saint for dealing with all this at her age and after my dad…” Brian hesitated. “But it’s just that I am almost forty-six years old. I am a multimillionaire, for chrissakes! It’s stifling to be living in my childhood bedroom again.”

 

“Are you ready to go back to your estate?” Roger asked with more than a hint of disbelief in his voice.

 

“Yes. No—that is, I’m not sure. I was thinking…”

 

“Out with it.”

 

“I was thinking maybe I could stay at your place. Like on the couch or something.”

 

“Brian, don’t be ridiculous, I _have_ guest bedrooms. With their own wc’s even.” Roger could see the flush rising on the other man’s neck. He sighed. “Of course you can stay. It’ll save me all this driving back and forth.” _And I can keep a better eye on you_ , he added privately to himself.

 

 

 

**June 1993**

 

 _Jesus Christ, Freddie had a lot of shit_ , Roger thought uncharitably and then immediately regretted it. He attempted to lift the first of the many boxes of records he had spent the last hour sorting and felt something spasm in his back. _No, fuck it, he really did have way too much shit._

 

A week ago, Brian had come to him nervously with the plan of going through Garden Lodge with Mary and deciding who might want what before she finally moved in. Roger responded to the suggestion with relief because he was growing tired of Mary’s hinting by way of Veronica and then John that he prod the damaged guitarist on that very subject. After seeing the warm reception his first suggestion had garnered, Brian had been brave enough to bring up the estate.

 

_“I think I want to sell our country house too.” They have been sharing a curry take away and now Brian is nervously twisting a paper napkin in his hands. Roger wonders if he wants to be talked out of or into his decision._

_“If it’s what you want, then…” he begins cautiously._

_“I want to know if you think that I am rushing into this…or making a decision out of grief or whatever that I will regret later.” Brian says quickly, picking little torn bits from the napkin and putting them in a pile on the table. “It’s just that…that house never really felt like mine. It was chosen by Freddie, it was filled with Freddie’s things. And that was okay, you know? I was happy for the most part to live in his house with him. But_ with him _was the thing. Now that he’s gone…being there just reminds me of him and not in a good way, an uncomfortable way of not belonging when the reason for putting up with that feeling is long gone.”_

_Roger thinks of the house. He has always liked the house and his emotions instinctively rebel at the thought of never being able to go back there to remember all the good times they had shared at the estate. At the same time, he is able to push back his sentimentality and consider Brian’s point. The things that come first to his mind—the daffodils lining the drive in the first blush of spring, the roses climbing the sides of the house in the fullness of summer, autumn costume parties in the lushly decorated ballroom and quiet afternoon tea out of antique china with a roaring fireplace pushing away the chill of winter—these events are all littered with Freddie. At the time, none of them had minded. It had pleased them to do the things he liked, to admire the objects he liked so well. But it does seem a bit macabre to carry on with such things now. Roger tries to summon up moments in the house that were owned by Brian and comes up short, a few stolen things—watching meteors in the garden after a sudden rain and getting scolded for mud on the carpet, working out guitar solos on the Steinway in the foyer when Freddie had been off at the spa or some similar thing. “I don’t think that it is a rash decision. In fact, I think it is very wise of you. It took strength to decide to let it go.”_

 

So Brian had navigated the successful handing over of Garden Lodge to its new owner. Mary immediately set about settling in and in general acting more comfortable than Roger could ever remember Brian being there. She had already had them over for dinner, treating Brian so delicately that he ended up flustered and upset and Roger had gotten too defensive. Brian had confessed in the car ride home that he didn’t yet feel comfortable around other people, but that it was different around Roger. The warm fuzz that had started in his core and filled his extremities at this comment prompted Roger to offer to go with Brian to clean out the estate. As many strides as Brian seemed to be making lately, Roger did not think that it was a task he should be attempting alone.

 

 _Little did I know that my chivalrous offer made in a passing moment of generosity would condemn me to hours of rummaging, cleaning, sorting and waiting while Brian agonizes over old concert posters from Rotterdam._ Today he had drug John along. The bassist had been more than willing to accompany him, Roger had seen the flash of guilt in his eyes when he mentioned that they were cleaning out the house and he said that the kids were driving him crazy on their summer vacation. John had a knack for sorting out the things that Brian would want to keep. Roger suspected it was because he knew the objects that had had sentimental value to Freddie. It was tempting to sit in the basement and listen to records while John did all the work upstairs.

 

The activity seemed to be energizing Brian and giving a sort of purpose to a man who had lately formed a habit of stewing in guilt and depression. Still, after Brian had reacted badly to stumbling across a photo of him and Freddie, Roger had swept the house for other little reminders and decided to handle the music collection himself, torn the entire time on whether it was better to shelter his friend or give him a taste of shock therapy. The internal debate had never really gotten off the ground. The image of Brian’s lifeless body sprawled on the bedroom floor in this very house was still too fresh to allow him the courage to attempt anything drastic.

 

Speaking of Brian, the other man had gotten awfully quiet. Roger couldn’t remember hearing him bumping around upstairs for quite a while. A surge of panic had him dropping the box and running upstairs.

 

“Roger?” John called as he tore up from the basement, poking his head up from behind a pile of neatly stacked boxes.

 

He gestured up the stairs. “Brian—he’s been quiet. I just wanted to check on him…”

 

John frowned with comprehension. “Roger, I don’t think—I’m sure he’s fine.”

 

Roger knew it was ridiculous. He remembered when the kids were small and left under his sole care from time to time. That sudden anxiety in the few seconds he couldn’t find them on the playground felt just like this. “John, I just need to check, okay?”

 

John shrugged, “Sure, whatever you want. Call if you need me.”

 

Roger took the second flight of stairs at a more measured pace. As he topped the landing, he was relieved to see that the bedroom at the end of the hall was dark and empty. Fresh trepidation washed through him when he saw the light in the corridor outside the master bedroom. Brian had previously agreed to let John and Roger handle that room.

 

Roger ran to the doorway. Brian was perched on the edge of the bed, a cherry blossom-strewn kimono spread across his lap and a bottle of pills clutched in his right hand.

 

He slapped the bottle from Brian’s hand with a violence that surprised even himself. Brian turned to face him with shock intensifying into anger. “It was only aspirin!” he cried out but his eyes were just too glassy and his movement a shade too clumsy and while the pills may have been simple pain relievers, Roger could smell the alcohol on his breath.

 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, May?” he shouted. They had all been working so hard to help him and now here he was. _Backsliding like a coward_ , Roger thought viciously.

 

“I didn’t mean too.” Brian’s voice was still belligerent, but there was a shade of pleading in there too. “I needed to be a little numb to do this.” He waved his hands at the room.

 

Roger tried to force a calm into his voice that he couldn’t feel. He didn’t point out that Brian shouldn’t even be in that room. He didn’t acknowledge the surge of jealousy that seeing that kimono clutched in Brian’s hand provoked. _Just get him talking. That seems to help._ “Brian. Tell me what you were feeling.”

 

“I am just so angry with him!” Roger had heard Brian angry before. But his anger was usually laced with hurt and a sense of protest against injustice. This was the first time Roger had heard his shouting full of so much hate. “You say I need to stop running from my feelings, but how the hell can you be angry at someone who is fucking dying?! Who is _fucking dead?_ Huh? Tell me that, if you were in my shoes, what would you have done?

 

“He wanted you to leave him.” Brian and Roger both whipped their heads towards the doorway in shock. John was standing there somberly, leaning against the frame in weariness.

 

“What?” Brian asked, gaping at the man.

 

“He told you as soon as he knew he had it,” John said heavily.  Roger reflected on the macabre humor of the fact that none of them could still easily say those words. _HIV. AIDS._ Even in his mind, they sent a chill through him. “He hoped you would leave him. He wanted you to punish him for what he had done. It would have been easier for him, in a way.”

 

“How do you know all this?” Brian said, voice low but edged in hysteria.

 

John shrugged. “He told me,” he said simply. “We talked a lot. Especially towards the end.”

 

“I don’t understand how he could have been so careless. Was he running round on me with half of Munich?!” Brian spat. “You say he wanted punishment, he got that in spades—it killed him. He could have fucking _killed_ me!”

 

“Brian, you were never tempted? By another while you were with Freddie?” John asked.

 

“No. Never.” There was a hardness in his tone that made Roger believe him. “Were you?” he shot back at John.

 

John sighed and they both glanced at Roger. _Oh, yeah, turn to the resident fuck-up for help understanding why people screw up relationships,_ Roger thought bitterly. _Thanks, guys._

 

“ _I_ don’t have any answers,” Roger protested. “I told him to stop.”

 

“While you were fucking him,” Brian said bitterly.

 

“That was a mistake.” Roger said, keeping a tight rein on his temper. “I’ve apologized for that.”

 

“He never loved any of them,” John interjected. “It was only ever you.”

 

“Then how could he have done it? How could he, how could he, how could he?!” With every word, Brian beat his fist into the bed’s mattress. Roger winced with every blow. John went to the guitarist’s side and grabbed Brian’s wrists. Brian struggled against his grip, but John was in better shape and controlled his flailing.

 

“Brian, listen to me. It’s okay to be angry. You have every right to be angry. Maybe that’s why he did it on some level, to provoke a reaction from you. But you don’t owe anyone anything now.” John continued to hold Brian, who was breathing hard and shaking, repeating soothing words again and again. “This are _your_ emotions and they hurt, yeah, I know. But you need to feel them before you can get better.”

 

Roger stood there uncomfortably, knowing that Brian would not want his touch, feeling useless. John caught his eye over the top of Brian’s head. _Go_ , he mouthed silently. Roger hesitated, then gave up and decided to trust John’s judgment and left the room carefully.

 

 _Well, it’s a step_ , he thought grimly. _We will find out if it ends up being a step forward or backward._

 

 

 

**July 1993**

 

“Quasar is not a real word.”

 

“It is too!” Brian protested.

 

“It is, Dad. We learned about it in school!” Felix laughed and slapped Roger’s hand away from Brian’s tiles.

 

“Hey, when did you get to be so smart?” he asked his son, ruffling his hair.

 

“Dad!” Felix shoved his hand away and tried to smooth down his hair again. He was getting to be at that age where everything that your parents do is supremely embarrassing, but Roger thought he was handling it rather well.

 

“I only have consonants,” Rory said with the eternal frustration of someone whose vocabulary could win them many games if only they weren’t held back by the luck of the draw. “There aren’t any words with four r’s.”

 

“That’s okay, Rory, all I have are vowels,” he said cheerfully. “We should team up to take down these smartie pants, huh?”

 

“Yeah!” Rory said in excitement, looking up at him. The girl had a competitive streak a mile wide.

 

“No way, that is not fair. You usually win anyway,” Brian objected.

 

Roger leaned over conspiratorially to Rory and whispered, “That’s because I sneak tiles up my sleeve.” He turned out his shirt cuff and several tiles came cascading out onto Rory’s lap.

 

She erupted into shrill giggles as Felix stood up and shouted, “Teach the dirty cheater a lesson!” He grabbed handfuls of tiles and attacked. Roger soon found himself pushed to the ground by two squirming children. He could see Brian leaning back and laughing hard.

 

“Brian, help! _We_ could team up…”

 

“Oh no, you got yourself into this one. You’re going to have to get yourself out,” Brian said with superior smugness.

 

The assault continued unabated. Roger caught a small, unbelievably sharp heel in the gut. “Ummph!” he gasped, winded. “That’s it, I yield! I yield! You’ve won…you’ve won.”

 

Laughing, the kids ran off. “Dad, can we put some music on the CD player?” Rory called back. Roger chuckled as he picked tiles from the folds of his shirt. Rory was fascinated by the shiny backs of CDs and by making the tray go in and out.

 

“Yeah. Just don’t get fingerprints on any of my CDs!” Roger started to pick himself up off the floor. He glanced at Brian on the sofa. He looked content, a lazy smile was spread across his face and he gazed after the children with half-closed eyes. The day had been a very good day. The kids were visiting for the weekend and they had spent the morning getting unbelievably dirty in the wood looking for frogs and then Brian had given Felix pointers on his guitar technique while Rory ‘accompanied’ them on a miniature drum set. Roger felt, dare he say it, happy. _This_ , he thought, _I could be content with this if it is as far as Brian can go_.

 

“They’re great kids, Rog,” Brian said sincerely, still watching after the children.

 

“Yeah, they are, aren’t they? Hard to believe they’re mine.”

 

The unmistakable opening strains of ‘Procession’ filled the room. Roger jumped to his feet and saw Brian start as he recognized it too. Roger knew that Brian had been carefully avoiding any hint of Freddie’s voice since the funeral and feared what this might trigger. He went to stop the album, but Brian reached out and grabbed his wrist, hard. It was their first contact in three months and Roger felt as if a great charge of static electricity had been discharged. The hair stood up on the back of his neck and he was instantly half-hard.

 

“No, I need to do this.”

 

“Okay,” Roger said and cautiously moved to sit next to him on the sofa. Brian tensed and then relaxed and leaned against Roger’s shoulder. Slowly, moving as if the other man was some sort of wild animal that might easily startle, Roger put his arm around him and pulled him closer until he was nestled close to Roger’s chest. He could feel the rapid throb of Brian’s heart. He concentrated on breathing slowly and evenly.

 

They listened to the album in silence. Roger’s mind wandered, trying not to focus on Brian’s scent or the feel of his shoulder bones pressed into his side. He thought of how he felt making this album, young and so very much alive. Before Brian got sick. Before Freddie got sick.

 

The finished product revealed none of the effort that had gone into the making of it, but if he tried, he could remember. He could remember the guitar part in Ogre Battle that had taken endless takes to get right, the drum part in Loser in the End that was always too loud no matter how they mixed it and that Freddie had had a near meltdown over, and the lyrics in Nevermore that none of them were ever happy with and whose final solution had precipitated a week of not talking to each other.

 

“He was a beautiful singer, wasn’t he?” Brian said softly. Roger could barely hear him. He mused that it was the first reflection on Freddie that Brian had made without sounding bitter, hurt or angry.

 

“The best,” he said emphatically.

 

“He never meant to hurt anyone,” Brian whispered slowly, as if coming to a difficult realization. “He never meant to hurt me, did he?”

 

“Oh, God no, Brian. He never, ever wanted that. He only wanted to be loved. But he never really understood how much receiving a stranger’s love could hurt the ones who loved him already.”

 

“I always made him into something more than he could ever be.” Brian shook his head. His hair tickled Roger’s face. “Then got upset when he disappointed me. I don’t know why I did that.”

 

“You did that with yourself too,” Roger pointed out quietly. Brian looked back at him, first surprised and then sober.

 

“Hah, I guess I did at that. Freddie always knew what he wanted. I never could decide.” Brian was biting his lip again. “It made me unhappy and he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t enough. But there has to be more to love than just being happy, doesn’t there?”

 

“Yes, I think so.” Roger had been in love for a long time. And if he was honest, with more than just one person. He knew that it had rarely made him happy.

 

They listened to Freddie’s voice in the stillness. Roger wondered what Brian was thinking, hoping that he wasn’t thinking too hard. _We have all done some terrible things to each other. I have abused Brian’s trust for the satisfaction of my lust, Brian worked so hard to protect his heart that it ended up broken worse than if he had ever let Freddie truly have it all, Freddie was selfish with his desire and need, Brian and I took John for granted and John played favorites._ Roger remembered what John had said to him in the car on the way to rescue Brian, ‘ _Roger, just leave it. It is what it is and nobody knows what could have been. Let’s just be happy with that_.’ Roger smiled. _If a true born accountant can let the tally of who wronged who slide then that should be a lesson to all of us._

 

“I think I can forgive him now. I can almost forgive myself.” Brian’s words sounded nothing like a confident assertion, but tentative and unsure as they were, they were the best things that Roger had heard since he realized Freddie was ill. Brian took a shuddering breath, “Oh God, _Freddie is dead._ I haven’t even cried for him. Not properly.” Roger heard the hitch in his voice and knew what it foretold. _Good,_ he thought, _this will hurt, but it’s been a long time coming._

 

Roger held Brian while he sobbed. He had done his own mourning months and years ago and still the sound of Brian’s delayed and therefore magnified grief tugged him back to that place he had been. Still some days, he would see something or think of something to tell Freddie and would be struck all over again that Freddie wasn’t here, that he could never tell him. He wanted to tell Brian that it got easier, but that it would never go away. A few tears slipped down his own face to be lost in Brian’s hair.

 

Slowly, Brian’s weeping quieted. He cleared his throat and regarded Roger’s soaked shirt with consternation. He wiped his face off on his own shirt. “Play your song,” he croaked and cleared his throat again.

 

Roger didn’t have to ask which one. “Brian…” he said cautiously.

 

“Please.” There was a note in Brian’s voice that he was not able to refuse.

 

He untangled himself from the other man and walked grudgingly to the CD player. “I wish I had never fucking written it.”

 

“Roger!” Brian exclaimed, shocked. “It’s a lovely song.”

 

“Yeah, I don’t usually do lovely,” He muttered under his breath. He glanced back at Brian. “It’s too sad, it always reminds me of how beautiful Montreux was and completely unable we were to enjoy it because of how broken up we all were.” He took Queen II out and sorted through the precariously stacked discs until he found Innuendo in the case for the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack. _Kids,_ he grumbled to himself. He put the CD in and his hand hovered over the play button. “It’ll have me blubbering too,” he warned one last time, feeling lightheaded and half-drunk from all the emotions that had just been exorcised.

 

Roger went back to sit by Brian. A brief moment of awkwardness passed between them as he hesitated and then Brian made the first move to return to their former position. “I thought that you wrote it about Freddie…when I heard it first,” Brian mused as Roger’s arms tightened around him, holding too tight in case the other man’s presence in his arms was just an illusion.

 

“What? But you were surprised when—when I told you…” He flushed and could not go on.

 

“Oh, I didn’t suspect that it was a love you had—hmm— _consummated._ ” Roger winced at Brian’s choice of words. “I had always sensed a kind of intensity when you were around us, just the three of us alone. I guess I just assumed it was for Freddie.”

 

“I _did_ write it for Freddie,” Roger said, his truthfulness making him hoarse. “And John, and you. The band is my family, you know? I wrote it for all of you…” He paused. “But mostly I wrote it for you.”

 

Brian was quiet for a moment. “Freddie told me that it said all the things that he felt. He thought he could have written it himself. At the time, it made me upset, that you two were so in tune…and the line about the rest of his life being just a show.” Brian shifted. “Now I think I understand what he meant. Why he told me and not you. It was meant to be an assurance. A gift.”

 

“Do you remember when you forgot…what was it?” Roger snapped his fingers, amazed at how slippery memory had become. “One of Freddie’s countless anniversaries…”

 

“Oh, God, there were so many,” Brian chuckled a little, sounding surprised at himself. “Hmm…it was the anniversary of the first show after we officially started dating. I really should have remembered it because in the dressing room we…” Brian blushed. “Well, anyway, never mind.”

 

Roger coughed and readjusted his position. “Yeah, well, you needed a gift on the fly. We put some mud in a fancy jar and convinced him it was cosmetic clay from Norway or some shit.”

 

“ _You_ put the mud in the jar.” Brian paused, remembering. “Shit, I told him it was finely ground by glaciers over the millennia. He liked it so well that he wanted to reorder it once it was gone.”

 

“And, boy, did we have to scramble then. We didn’t have any more jars!”

 

“I was so in love with him then. I would have given him a million jars of fake glacier mud if it would have made him happy.”

 

“’Things seemed so perfect, you know?’” Roger sang softly under his breath.

 

“Hmm…’those days are all gone now.’” Brian’s pale face looked melancholy for a moment before a thought struck him. “Do you remember when you convinced him I was leaving the band?”

 

“Oh! I had forgotten that. Hell, we were so pissed that night, that’s the only way I got away with it. In the morning, he didn’t really remember what I had said, only that he believed it. We nearly had a whole album recorded of just your songs before John let the cat out of the bag.” Roger couldn’t stop from laughing. He could vividly recall the white look of panic on Freddie’s face and how Brian had kept saying ominous things completely by chance. He had had to fake an allergy attack to keep his laughter from clueing Freddie in.

 

Brian took a shaky lungful of air and then laughed breathlessly. “I feel like I could go take on anything.”

 

Roger knew how he felt. He felt fragile and exhausted but also empty and light as though all the heavy, toxic sludge that had been weighing him down had been washed from his body. He felt ready for a fresh start. Ready for anything.

 

Brian rearranged himself so that his arms were around Roger too. He tightened his embrace and softly kissed Roger’s neck. A tension that Roger had been holding onto for decades released. _I can take on the world._

 


	13. Chapter 13

 

_I breathe deeply. The humid night air seems to fill my lungs with more presence than usual and I relish the luxury of breathing how I like without anyone noticing. I haven’t been alone since…well, since that terrible night. I try not to dwell on it too much. Roger has been my constant shadow, even sleeping by me, shyly and purposefully chaste on the chaise lounge in the bedroom. I have woken up crying out a few times to find Roger carefully not touching me but murmuring soothing nonsense until the emotions of the nightmare have faded and I can begin to fall back asleep. Sometimes I find myself wishing that maybe he wouldn’t be so cautious and sometimes the dreams aren’t nightmares at all and filled with blue eyes rather than brown and blond hair that flashes in the warm sunlight. I wake up from these dreams slowly, clinging to them guilty, and go the rest of the day feeling restless as though my skin is too tight for my body._

_Tonight the kids have some event and rather than go along as I normally do, I mentioned to Roger that I would like some time alone to think. I felt a pang somewhere deep inside at the way his eyes immediately darkened with worry. I wonder for the hundredth time how I got to such a state that I needed poor, carefree Roger worrying over me. I hope that he sees me making some sort of progress and that he worries less each day._

_It feels odd to be alone. I keep thinking that I hear something, but when I turn it is nothing but a cricket in the bushes or the sigh of the wind. I force myself to relax. I concentrate on the coolness of the grass beneath my body that is nearly indistinguishable from wetness and the feel of the air leaving my body on every exhalation like a somewhat rickety old pair of bellows._

_I look up at the stars. I suppose it is a cliché by now to explain how I like the stars, but then I’ve never been shy about sharing my likes and dislikes. The stars make some people feel small and insignificant, but I have never seen it that way. Rather, although the immense wonder of the night sky makes me realize just how transient and trivial my life is, that realization makes me want to cling to my joys and treasure them. And let my worries go like the trifling things that they are._

_The night is clear but the omnipresent summer haze makes the sky shimmer. The stars dance in my vision and mesmerize me. As I gaze skyward, I lose myself in the depths of the sky and the stars look like reflections of themselves in a black, still pool. I take another breath, unblinking, and the illusion is nearly complete. I feel myself falling upward and can almost feel the cold wetness of water against my face, swallowing me under. I gasp and think of another starry night, a night long before things got complicated and hard, when I still knew how to love. Maybe the memory of that night can help me to remember the timeworn and rusty but strangely familiar movement of how things happen between two people who are falling towards something far more wondrous and strange than the suns of other solar systems._

 

 

 

**May 1975**

_In my tangled state of mind,_

_I've been looking back to find where I went wrong_

 

 

The sounds of the party floated out over the lawn, the Brownian motion of its participants throwing larger than life shadows over my head as I sat concealed behind a hedge on an afghan that Freddie had nicked. It had probably been made by someone’s grandma, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to feel guilty. The night was unusually warm for early May and the hot press of bodies inside the record label big wig’s house had made me feel more lightheaded than the few beers I’d had could account for. It had been about a year since I got sick and I tried to pretend complete recovery around the band because I couldn’t take the dueling looks of fear and pity they cast me when I begged off on a night out or seemed more winded than necessary. But the truth was, I _wasn’t_ fully recovered and I had been relieved when Freddie had suggested we sojourn to the backyard for some air.

 

“There we are then, dear,” Freddie interrupted my thoughts, sinking to his knees on the blanket beside me, carefully manipulating a magnum bottle of champagne and two crystal flutes. “Nothing some fresh air can’t cure.” At my startled look, he added, “You were looking a bit peaky in there.”

 

“Yeah,” I cleared my throat nervously and ran my hands down the front of my shirt. “I don’t know why they always plan these parties for right when we get back. Everyone is all jetlagged and such…” Freddie’s look of dubiousness made me trail off in the middle of making excuses.

 

“Well, it is the ‘end of tour’ party,” Freddie pointed out. “It wouldn’t make any fucking sense to have it not at the _end_ of the tour. And nobody is buying your bullshit, dear, jetlagged or not, Roger is about to drink two roadies twice his size under the bloody jumbo jet.”

 

I must have looked mortified because Freddie rolled his eyes and went on. “Brian, it’s okay, you know. You are basically the founding member of the group, we aren’t going to turn on you like a fucking pack of hyenas if we sense the slightest weakness.”

 

“Founders of bands get kicked out…if they aren’t contributing,” I replied querulously, aware of the perverseness of arguing for my own dismissal. My need to be right was stronger though.

 

“Who?” Freddie challenged with a raised eyebrow.

 

“Umm…” I thought desperately. There had to be someone. “Ah! Brian Jones.”

 

“Oh, yeah, Brian,” Freddie scoffed. “Your catching ill is pretty much the same magnitude as Brian fucking Jones’ shit.”

 

A flash of inspiration struck. “What about Syd Barrett, then?”

 

Freddie just shook his head and began to ignore me. “If you feel the urge to play with Mandrax and Brylcreem on your head, let me know and the rest of us can discuss kicking you out. Until then, enough of this nonsense, okay?”

 

He busied himself with opening the champagne, holding the two flutes between his knees as he did so. I let the debate slide and watched how he removed the foil and wire cage with a deft sort of grace, letting the cork pop off impressively while at the same time not spilling a drop of the wine. I wondered if he had practiced in front of a mirror to get it to look so good. I wouldn’t put it past him, but couldn’t help admiring him all the same. He passed me a glass and I took my first sip slowly, knowing the bubbles would go straight to my head but simultaneously wanting a legitimate reason for the giddy tingling I felt just sitting here alone in the night with this man.

 

Freddie was wearing one of the kimonos he had bought in Japan. We had all gone to a perfectly quaint little shop together, part publicity stunt, partially because actually _going_ shopping with Freddie was somewhat better than being forced to sit through his endless stories about the shopping trips he took without us. Freddie had gushed over the cultural and artistic beauty of the clothing. Roger had deemed kimonos very practical for easy in and out access with a suggestive wag of his eyebrows that made Freddie double up in laughing. John had blushed deeply when we had tried to get him to try one on and then complied with the rock-steady patience he always showed when Freddie wanted to dress him up like a rock star. I had been unable to find a kimono that was anything near long enough. Freddie had ending up buying this knee-length one in an act of solidarity.

 

I absentmindedly traced a delicate branch on the smooth fabric that lay near my hand. The cherry blossoms scattered across the garment made me long to be back in Japan. My hand grazed Freddie’s thigh and I snatched it away from the other man quickly.

 

The movement of my hand caught Freddie’s attention. He smoothed down the silk across his lap and took a sip of his champagne. “Did you enjoy Japan, Brian?” he asked softly.

 

“Japan was lovely, you were—” I caught myself and covered the pause with a gulp and a cough. I couldn’t believe I had been fucking about to say Freddie was lovely. The night was getting to me. He _had_ been beautiful, like a rare and wild creature in his native habitat, posing and preening in front of the adoring crowds that he didn’t have to talk to because they wouldn’t understand him. All he had to do was just sing to them, making it seem that was what he was born to do. “—you were wonderful. I could have never imagined it would have gone that well.”

 

“Someday it will be like that wherever we play. Just you watch,” Freddie said adamantly. I couldn’t help but believe him. I had always been baffled at Freddie’s self-confidence, it seemed far more foreign to me than the man himself. I wondered if he was so driven to make the band succeed because he alone out of all of us had nothing to fall back on. And yet, I couldn’t help but feel that Freddie would be famous no matter what happened to Queen. The world would notice him like it or not.

 

“I believe you,” I said quietly. Freddie threw his head up in surprise and half-turned to look at me. His expression softened and my stomach flopped nervously. He turned away and shifted so that he was nearly nestled in the curve between my body and my supporting arm. I ached for those last few inches, for contact. I readjusted and my shoulder brushed his back. He didn’t seem to notice but let his neck relax and looked up at the sky.

 

“Japan felt like a magical wonderland. But I was surprisingly glad to come back to England. To…home.” Freddie was quiet and lost in thought for a while. I too let my thoughts wander, wondering vaguely what he was thinking. I remembered the gardens in Japan that Freddie so admired. I remembered one still moment when he had wandered away to a perch on a wall surrounding a pool filled with water lilies. He had been dressed in all white and when he thought no-one was watching, he let go of the pose he always carries around people, relaxed, and let one gracefully hand trail through the water. The ripples spreading from his hand had gently rocked the lilies and I had thought him the most beautiful flower among the rest. I had had an irrational urge to build him a garden back home so that he could always be like this, on private display unaware, among flowers.

 

“Tell me about the stars,” Freddie said abruptly, pointing at random. “What is that one there?”

 

I laughed. “That one is nothing in particular. But there,” I moved his hand three degrees to the right. His skin was hot to the touch and I let go more quickly than necessary. “That’s Sirius, the Dog Star, and it is part of Orion’s belt. Orion, the hunter.”

 

“What does it mean?” he asked in wonder. I smiled as I thought of the crest he designed and his fascination with Led Zeppelin’s symbols.

 

“It means that we are up too bloody late,” I replied glibly. Freddie turned his head to look back at me. The tips of his silky hair brushed my cheek. His hair smelled like cloves and musk and amber, like expensive foreign shampoo and not like the cheap generic stuff I had been buying at the chemist ever since my mum had stopped buying it for me. His kohl-rimmed eyes were wide as he looked at me. Our faces were a few tantalizing inches apart. I felt feverish again, like I had in the close press of the party, although I could dimly feel the caress of a cooling night breeze on my skin. I licked my lips nervously.

 

“What?” Freddie said, not taking his eyes from mine.

 

I took a short breath. “The constellation rises pretty late this time of year. If you can see it, it’s a ways past midnight.”

 

“Are you tired? Do you what to go back inside?” Freddie’s voice was low and he tilted his chin up slightly, like a dare.

 

“No,” I returned, a bit more quickly than I meant too.

 

He laughed, not bothering to hide his teeth. I watched him carefully, seeing the way he leaned a bit too close to me and then hovered there, just out of reach. I wondered if I was reading too much into things, desperate for some clue about how he felt towards me. He passed me the bottle of champagne and I tried to focus on refilling my glass, sloshing a little over the side, unsure if it was the bubbly that was making my hand clumsy or something else entirely.

 

When I had finished, Freddie snatched it away from me and drank straight from the bottle. He swayed slightly and then collapsed backwards onto the blanket with a sigh of contentment. I looked at him lying there, staring up at the night sky, for a while before carefully lowering myself to lay beside him, each inch separating us simultaneously feeling like an insurmountable gulf and a distance much too short to hide any of my secrets.

 

“Truth or dare?” he asked, with an almost sleepy drawl in his voice.

 

I couldn’t help the laugh that burst from me. “What?! We aren’t twelve, Fred.”

 

“You are just afraid to admit that when you _were_ twelve, you were the coward who always picked truth.”

 

“I was not!” I replied indignantly.

 

“Okay, then, truth or dare?” Freddie turned his head to look at me and raised one eyebrow challengingly.

 

It suddenly crossed my mind that Freddie was the type to have something diabolical planned for dare. I hesitated, unwilling to eat my words so quickly, but also not about to give Freddie a blank check to make me do _anything_. “Umm…truth.” Besides, I _was_ the one who always picked truth, although I wasn’t about to admit that to him.

 

“Aha!” Freddie crowed, rising to his elbows. “I told you!”

 

“Well, I am in no condition to go running around, mooning label execs or whatever humiliating thing you have planned,” I said petulantly.

 

A calculating look grew on Freddie’s face. I started to feel nervous. Maybe dare would have been better after all. “Who was the first person you kissed?” he asked slyly.

 

I could _feel_ the blush rising on my neck. “I am _not_ going to answer that.”

 

“Oh, come on, Brian! You have to, those are the rules! And besides, it isn’t that outrageous of a question, unless you were abused by your father or something.” Freddie sat up straighter and gestured wildly with his glass. “Oh, hell, you weren’t abused by your dad, were you?”

 

“Jesus Christ, Freddie.” I wanted to roll over and hide my burning face. “ _No._ No, that isn’t the issue.”

 

“Ah, good, that’s a relief. Good on your dad.” I rolled my eyes and half-sat up. Freddie scooted closer and leaned back on his hands, matching my pose. “Well then, what _is_ the issue? You aren’t getting out of this.”

 

“You are going to laugh at me.” I found that I couldn’t look at him.

 

“Ha! Brian, everyone’s first time is fraught with embarrassment and disaster,” Freddie said dismissively. I thought that I should ask him about his sometime. “I promise I won’t laugh at _you_ , just maybe the story.”

 

I sighed. The memory still stung and I hadn’t shared it with anyone. Not even my mum after the fact and she could tell I was upset and badgered me about it for weeks. I don’t know what it was that convinced me to tell Freddie now. Maybe it was the champagne, maybe it was the heat rising off of his arm that I could feel burning into my skin as our forearms nearly, agonizingly, almost touched. Maybe it was the spell of the perfect, starry night. But for whatever reason, I began to speak.

 

“Starting in the second form, all the boys seemed to talk about were girls. Which girls were fit, which ones they liked, who was dating who. I felt so left out, I never really noticed girls…not wanting to do the things that they talked about anyway. I would much rather read or play my guitar or—or anything really.” I paused and braved a glance at Freddie. His face was carefully impassive. I sighed and went on. “I thought I was asexual or something. I—I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I danced with this girl, Lucy, at a school dance. I could tell she wanted me to kiss her, but I panicked and feigned illness to go home early.”

 

Freddie looked thoughtful. “Hmm, poor thing, she was probably terribly embarrassed that the mere thought of kissing her had made a boy sick.”

 

“Yeah, well, that didn’t stop the poor dear from telling all her friends about the incident,” I muttered darkly.

 

Freddie laughed. Somehow, it wasn’t as awful as I had imagined, to have him laughing at my childhood drama. I smiled along with him, finally realizing the humor and insignificance in the event. It had seemed like such a huge deal back then. “Teenage girls. Is there a crueler creature known to man?” Freddie mused. We drank in silence for a while. Then Freddie nudged gently, “So that was your first almost kiss. It doesn’t tell us about your first actual kiss.”

 

I sobered. I supposed I was in deep enough now, there wasn’t any choice but to go on. “There was this boy in my maths class, oh, fourth form or so, I suppose. He was unlike anybody I had ever met before. He was the son of the minister of something or other and so brightly ambitious that it took my breath away. He wanted to be prime minister. He had this confidence around him that you couldn’t help watching him whenever he came into the room.” _You have that same charisma too_ , I carefully did not say to Freddie. I remembered when we had first met him, when he had pushed his way into being our biggest fan and from there our singer, fueled by nothing but the assertion that he was going to be famous someday. It had always been a foreign personality trait to me, but all the more captivating for all that.

 

“What did he look like?” Freddie asked quietly.

 

“Colin was blonde with these green eyes, he was in the rowing club, if that gives you an idea. The girls were wild for him. Like our Roger, but you never would have confused Colin for girl!” Freddie chuckled a little. I forced myself to relax. I could still remember how angry all the girls around Colin had made me. And all the more confused because I didn’t know why they should. “He wasn’t doing well in maths. He needed to so that he could go on some prestigious college and then Oxford or Cambridge, his dad had his career all mapped out. He asked me to tutor him. I was flattered because I knew that his family could have hired a professional tutor if he had wanted.

 

“The tutoring didn’t go fast enough for his liking. He asked me to help him cheat. I said no. He said he knew how to convince me. He kissed me.” I felt my heart start to beat faster and I was too hot again. It was amazing how after all these years, just telling the story could throw me right back in that moment, a nervous and confused boy, enthralled by this young man who knew what I wanted far better than I myself ever did. “It had never crossed my mind that I might be queer. It just wasn’t really an option in those days, it was something that happened to other people.” I didn’t dare look at Freddie so I kept staring off straight ahead into the darkness. “In that kiss, I knew it. I knew why I had never wanted to talk about the girls. And I knew that I could never tell anyone.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“I helped him cheat. He strung me along until he left Hampton to do his sixth form at King’s. Like a fool, I asked if we could still see each other.” I paused and swallowed thickly. “He told me that he wasn’t a disgusting poofter like me and if all people were as easy to manipulate as I had been then he was definitely going to end up as prime minister one day.”

 

“Oh, Brian,” Freddie sighed, his voice thick with sympathy. I knew that if I met his eyes or he touched me, I wouldn’t be able to stop the tears that I felt prickling threateningly at the edges of my eyes.

 

“I was in so much shock, I wasn’t sure if I was about to cry or throw up. I managed to ask him if he was going to tell anyone about me. He said that he wouldn’t as long as I didn’t tell anyone he cheated at maths.” I closed my eyes. I had very deliberately refrained from ever looking him up again. I wondered how I would feel if I heard the name on the news one day.

 

Freddie snorted. “That slimy little blackmailer.”

 

“I was upset for a long time. By teenager standards at least. I couldn’t eat, I didn’t want to see anyone and so I threw myself into my studies and my guitar and concerts where I would stand in the back corner and just let the music be all that I needed. And that’s where I met Tim.” Freddie gave me a suspicious sidelong glance, but I ignored it. “When he found out that I played, he brought up that he wanted to start a band. And that was that. I recovered, I suppose, but I never much trusted anyone after that, I tried to keep to myself.”

 

Freddie rolled over to his stomach and got up on his elbows to look at me better. His kimono slipped off of one shoulder but he didn’t seem to notice. His tousled black hair just brushed his naked shoulder and it gleamed with an ethereal blue tinge in the moonlight. He licked his lips and then asked, “Why didn’t you tell me? That you were bent? I mean, me of all people.”

 

I had thought of telling him back when we had recently met but had managed to get pretty familiar with one another. At first, I had been afraid that he would think of it as a come on, when I was far from ready for that and just looking for some commiseration and maybe some advice. And then later, little things I heard and saw didn’t seem to quite add up. _That_ was the last thing I wanted to make a fool of myself mistakenly assuming. “Honestly, Freddie? I really thought the whole…” I waved a limp wristed hand. “…was an act.”

 

“An act!” he yelped, offended.

 

“Well, musicians have different standards!” I exclaimed, defensively. “A lot of them seem, rather…flamboyant and you were always into the whole glam rock thing. And there was, you know, _Mary_.” Mary. They had so obviously been in love. When I started feeling myself falling for Freddie, her mere existence had kept me up nights. _Freddie being interested in me was such a stretch as it was…and if he was really straight?_

 

“But Mary is different!” Freddie said, with an expression that said one would have to be stupid not to realize that. “I guess I have just always thought that people are people…just, you know, with different bits. I don’t know why that should stop me from being with one or the other.”

 

I couldn’t help but smile at that. It was a philosophy that sounded just so perfectly…Freddie. “Well, that is rather…sluttish…of you,” I teased gently.

 

Freddie hooted with laughter and gave me a shove while he got up to sit cross-legged closer to me. “Oh, fuck off, Brian,” he gasped. As I fought to regain my balance, I caught a hint of his scent wafting over me. There was alcohol on his breath and the musk of sweat underneath his cologne and suddenly it felt like he was sitting much too near to me.

 

“Brian, all that happened over ten years ago now. In all that time, you never were attracted to anyone else? You never let your icy wall of protective solitude crack a little?”

 

I let go of a breath that I hadn’t known I was holding. “Maybe a few times.”

 

“Do you like someone now?”

 

I froze as a paralyzing flood of fear washed over me. It felt like falling. “It isn’t your turn anymore.”

 

“Fine, you go.” Freddie looked far more serious than a drunken reenactment of a childhood game warranted.

 

My heart was pounding so hard that I was sure Freddie could hear it. The rational part of me that could be so strong was screaming at me not to trust him, screaming he couldn’t possibly be interested in me, while the more primal, animal part of my brain kept throwing up images of his eyes, heavily-lidded and lustful, his full, sensual lips and his naked chest, writhing against a microphone and the thick thatch of chest hair that trailed down below his waistband, tantalizingly. For once, the rational brain lost. “Truth or dare?” I murmured hoarsely, unable to unlock my gaze from his.

 

Freddie cocked an eyebrow and tilted his chin just so. “Dare.”

 

 _It’s now or never, Brian. If he refuses, you will never be able to look him in the eye again. If you don’t try, you won’t be able to face yourself._ I was terrified, I was driven crazy with need and I couldn’t for the life of me separate the adrenaline of one from the other. “Kiss me, Freddie,” I whispered, huskily. “Kiss me.”

 

For one terrifying moment, he didn’t move and neither did I. Our faces were inches apart and his eyes stared back at me, unblinking and pupils slightly dilated. I started to feel sick, he wasn’t going to do it and I parted my lips in a pant.

 

It was as if the movement jarred Freddie from whatever reverie he had been grasped by. He crossed the short distance between us and captured my mouth with his own. Our lips pressed together momentarily and I was left with brief impressions, the heat of his body, the rough scrape of stubble on his upper lip, the way I needed to remember to breath. Then he pushed deeper into the kiss and it was all I could do to just keep up.

 

The kiss was rough and clumsy. I grabbed a handful of Freddie’s hair to try and pull him closer to me. He pushed a hand up my shirt and we both hissed at the sudden contact. I was braced with one hand and Freddie was leaning over me, balanced on his knees. As he pushed his tongue further into my mouth, I could feel our balance go at the same time and he toppled on top of me onto the ground. He ended up straddling my stomach, kimono hitched up and tangled around his hips and our kiss had never broken.

 

There was a strange heat and hardness pressing against me and I realized with a rush of confused nervous arousal that it was his erection. And then I realized that if he slid down a few inches, his would be up against mine. The thought made me desperate to be rid of my jeans, I wanted more skin to skin contact than just our mouths and Freddie’s hand up my shirt.

 

“Freddie, please…” I moaned into him, distantly shocked I had been brave enough to voice my desire. He seemed to know what I was asking for and he moved without breaking the kiss. For a brief, glorious moment, our hips brushed and Freddie indulged in a couple ragged thrusts. Even through the denim, I could feel the hot, firmness of him and I thought of all the times in this last tour when his unitard left little to the imagination and I would nearly forget my guitar part. I didn’t think it would get easier after this.

 

He pulled away from me and I whimpered with the loss. But soon enough he was loosening his _obi_ and struggling out of the voluminous confines of the kimono. I was so taken by the sight of him nude in the moonlight right in front of me that I nearly missed him adroitly undoing my belt buckle and fly. My hands went to the buttons of my shirt and then hesitated. I thought of the wasted, pale shadow of a body that I saw in the mirror when I dared look and thought about how unpleasantly it would contrast with this gorgeous creature who was all cinnamon and a robust, masculine slenderness.

 

Freddie saw my reluctance and grabbed my wrists. “Brian, don’t be fucking ridiculous. I want to see you.” I looked into his face and saw only eager desire there, so slowly began to undo my shirt. His hands lingered on mine as they worked, sensuously urging me on in my undressing. He then moved to grasp my waistband and pulled my jeans over my hips. I kicked them off completely while Freddie paused to just stare at me for a while. I felt that uncomfortableness creeping up again when he suddenly ran his hands up the sides of my body, from my thighs to my shoulders, up my neck and into my hair. There he began kissing me again, our bodies pressed together, and the weight of him along with the satin hard heat of his cock against mine drove any lingering self-consciousness from my mind.

 

When he lowered his dark head to my straining erection, I had just enough presence of mind to collect myself enough so that I didn’t come immediately when his lips wrapped around me. I tried to time my breathing and not think too much about the wet heat of his mouth, the rough slide of his tongue over that sensitive spot on the underside of my cock, the feel of the back of his throat as the tip bumped it…ah, hell.

 

“Hey, hey,” I murmured, patting his shoulder. “Hey, move, I’m about to…oh, God!” Freddie didn’t move and inch and only redoubled his efforts. I came hard and with dizzying intensity. The sight of his throat working as he swallowed me would have been enough to finish me if I wasn’t already in the process of the very same.

 

“Oh, Brian, the sounds you make…” Freddie murmured, his voice low and full of emotion, as he slid up my body and kissed me again, this time sensuous and languid. I could taste myself on his tongue and I was strangely not repulsed just as I couldn’t seem to feel the cool air on my naked flesh. “I should have guessed…it’s always the prim and proper ones…ah, hell, I want to fuck you so bad…” Each of his phrases was punctuated by a kiss, moving down the side of my face until he ended up whispering into my ear, nipping my earlobe lightly. At the same time, his hand pushed up one of my legs and he ran his hand down the side of my thigh and around the curve of my ass until it wound up beneath my balls, lightly stroking.

 

I could feel his hard cock nestled next to my softened one and as his fingertips quested lower, I felt a surge of panic. I wasn’t naïve enough to not know what he wanted, what seemed to be about to happen, but I didn’t feel prepared. _Shouldn’t one take some sort of course on such things before attempting them?_ I thought with anxious absurdity. I put my leg down slightly and tried to wriggle out from under the other man. “Umm,” I stuttered, trying to seem cool and failing miserably.

 

“What’s wrong?” Freddie asked absently, continuing to concentrate on his hands.

 

 _Is there a suave way to say I have no idea what I am doing? Probably not._ “Ah…it’s just that…well, it’s my first…”

 

Freddie paused in his caress and looked at me incredulously. “Are you saying that you’ve never…”

 

I could feel the red blossoming on my cheeks which perversely only served to intensify the blush. “Not as such, no,” I confessed, refusing to meet his eyes.

 

“What! Well, I mean, _this…_ ” Freddie stopped and thought. “Wait, not even a bird?”

 

I shut my eyes painfully. “God, Freddie…”

 

“I’m sorry, I’m just amazed, that’s all.” Freddie’s voice lowered. “It’s not a bad thing—quite the opposite, actually.”

 

I felt that some sort of explanation was owed, not consciously picking up on the lust running under his words. “I know how it seems. A twenty-seven year old virgin? In a band?”

 

“Wait what about that…” He snapped his fingers a few times. “Chrissie, was that her name?”

 

“We fooled around a little bit. Nothing…that is, nothing like this.” I stumbled into silence. Freddie was watching me with an intense look on his face. I tried to regain some sort of composure. “I guess I just needed to be sure. That women weren’t…umm…an option.”

 

Freddie reached out his hand and swept a tendril of hair from my face. The touch sent something frizzing down my spine. The feeling was alien and a bit alarming, but pleasurable for all that. Freddie was staring at me oddly, his pupils dilated in his dark eyes. “Fuck me, Brian, but you do make me feel wicked.”

 

I leaned forward to kiss him again, to stop him from looking at me like that and because I wanted to taste him again. Our tongues tangled and I realized I wanted him closer, more inside me than kissing could accomplish. “I want you to be wicked,” I gasped, trying to get air.

 

“I don’t want to rush you or make you do anything you’re uncomfortable with, but I would like to show you…”

 

“Umm, yes, please,” I replied over the end of his sentence, aware that I sounded like I was accepting a second biscuit.

 

Freddie’s eyes crinkled slightly in the corners and I could tell that he was trying not to laugh. “Here, turn over.”

 

“Freddie, what…”

 

“No, hush, Brian. Let me do all the work for once.”

 

I decided to trust him and just do as he said. I turned over to lay on my stomach, propping my torso up on my elbows, nervous tension radiating through my body. “Relax,” Freddie whispered and ran his hand up the back of my thigh, catching slightly when the edge of his hand reached my ass and then cupping my flesh and squeezing tightly. Goose pimples broke out all over me and did nothing to ease my muscles.

 

Freddie was patient. The stroke turned into massage, slow and careful, and I let the ease of it take me. At some point, a lotion or oil was produce as if by magic and added to the mix. By the time Freddie slipped a careful finger inside of me, my brain was too sluggish to react against the intrusion.

 

As Freddie gave me time to become thoroughly accustomed to the fingers, I thought about how this was finally happening. There had been a tension between us all throughout the last tour, peaking in Japan. I had thought that I was imagining it. I fantasized over and over of Freddie whisking me off in a fit of fervor but I had never dreamed that once we were back in boring old England that here we would be. I wondered if I was ready for the ramifications of this. As Freddie slid his fingers out and positioned the tip of his leaking cock against me gently but firmly, I realized it was a bit too late for such questions.

 

He pushed in slowly, almost gingerly. At first it was easy and then the alien sense of intrusion became too much and I tensed reflexively. A blinding hot burst of pain swamped me, making me tense further. I focused on my breathing and managed to get in control again, the pain fading to a mild ache.

 

Slowly, I became aware that this was starting to feel _good_. Freddie completed his first stroke and pulled back. We both gasped.

 

“Ah…oh, tell me what you feel, darling.”

 

“Ungh,” I wasn’t feeling very articulate at the moment. “You feel so large and deep inside of me,” I panted. “And, uh, there is this strange pleasure…”

 

“Like this?” Freddie pulled out slightly, readjusted and pushed back in harder. A flash of white-hot sensation leapt from inside of me and radiated through my body. Slower and deeper, a building surge of heat spread through my groin. His motion shifted my body and as my cock rubbed against the blanket, I realized I was hard again.

 

“Oh, holy fuck!” I managed to get out.

 

“Ha! That’s the kind of descriptor I was after!” Freddie crowed, leaning down to kiss the back of my neck, thrusting in quick, short motions that kept him fully inside me and rocked our bodies together. “You feel incredible, dear, so hot and tight, I could fuck you like this for hours.”

 

I could feel my second orgasm building relentlessly and there was a strange tension in having his cock inside me. All at once it felt both incredible and gave me the strong urge for completion. The sensation was so overwhelming that I needed to have him come, to reach the destination. There was no way I could last for hours.

 

Freddie’s hands tightened on my hips, hard enough to leave bruises. I relished the ache, along with the pleasure-pain of his cock stretching me. His little thrusts were driving me mad. Each one pushed me closer to the edge, but like Zeno’s tortoise, I could never quite get there. “Please,” I gasped. “Please let go.”

 

Freddie took a ragged breath and obliged, fucking me in harder, deeper strokes than I thought possible. My body tensed against the onslaught and with every muscle contracted, I knew that I could not possible bear much more.

 

“Oh, Brian,” Freddie moaned and the sound of my name, said in that sex-soaked way, by that voice that was so very familiar was enough to finish me. I came on the poor, pilfered blanket, my second orgasm sharp and short. These contractions of it radiated through me and Freddie gave a grunt of surprise and thrust twice more, long and complete plunges and then he was coming too.

 

The feeling of him pulsing against the walls of my sensitized muscles was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Tears sprung to my eyes, it was simply too much to handle all at once. Freddie stayed where he was until he softened somewhat and each aftershock sent answering shudders through my body. Finally, he slipped out and rolled away. I gasped, it was like he had ripped away some vital part of me as he left.

 

“God, that nearly felt like _my_ first time again!” Freddie panted. He was breathing raggedly, soaked in sweat, and it gave me an illicit thrill the think that _I_ had made him that way.

 

“Sorry,” I said, turning over gingerly and laying as close to him as I dared.

 

“Brian, for the love of all that is holy, just stop apologizing. It was in a _good_ way.”

 

I almost apologized again, realized what I was doing and shut my mouth with a snap. Freddie seemed content to lay next to me in silence, our skin pressed together down the length of our bodies. The sweat drying off my nude flesh felt sinfully delightful and cool. I wondered what Freddie was thinking and whether I had just gone and blown my only chance. He’d grow tired of me now, I had seen it happen a hundred times with Roger’s girls and, although Freddie kept his affairs more private, I could only assume it worked that way for him too. _Please come back,_ I thought furiously at him, as if by intensity of thought I could somehow communicate with him. _Go away as often and as long as you need to, just always come back to me._

 

I snuck a glance at him. His profile was stark in the darkness, very beautiful and remote. He was staring up at the sky and he seemed to be thinking hard, a deep line between his brows. I looked for regret on his face and could see it if I tried. I blinked and tried to shove away my imagination. A soft rustling interrupted our reverie. I shook my head to clear it and sat up. “Hey, Fred…I think someone is coming.”

 

“Ah, shit. Here, pass me my clothes.” We sorted through the discarded clothing in haste. Freddie took my shirt first by accident and we discovered that my pants seemed to have disappeared. By the time that the sound of footsteps drew close to our concealing bush, I had managed to get mostly into my jeans and Freddie at least had fabric wrapped around his body and was trying to sort out the sleeves.

 

Roger walked around the hedge and our eyes locked. “Brian?” His bright blue eyes were filled with confusion and then they flicked away from mine and took in the whole scene. “Oh, Brian…Freddie. Oh, God…ah, I see.”

 

“Roger! Oh, Christ…” Freddie tried to put his arm in the wrong sleeve of the kimono, got tangled and then gave up and looked up at Roger a bit sheepishly.

 

“Umm,” Roger rubbed a hand over his eyes, paused and snuck a peek, and then threaded his hand through his hair and closed his eyes. “Mary says if you want a ride back home, she’s leaving now.”

 

“Roger, we were just having a little fun.” Freddie’s words hit me like a slap and I twitched. My movement caught his eye and he quickly glanced at me and then back at Roger.

 

“Yes, I can see that,” Roger said, looking anywhere but at us. The stars seemed fascinating for lots of people tonight. The drummer was looking rather pale and queasy. Freddie noticed too.

 

“Are you alright? You haven’t been drinking too much have you?”

 

“What? No! Umm…you know what, come to think of it, maybe I have. I really ought to be going. Your ride, Fred, leaving now.” He shot Freddie a strange look as he turned and walked away and I realized that he wasn’t avoiding looking at us, he was only avoiding _me_.

 

As soon as Roger was out of earshot, Freddie turned to me and grabbed my shoulders, pulling me closer to him. “Look, Brian, I just said that for Roger’s sake. You know how he is. Serious stuff scares him and anyway I don’t want things to get awkward with the band.”

 

Again I felt that pressing need to act cool in front of the other man. In the haze of post-coitus hormones, I desperately wanted to proclaim my undying devotion and commitment. Instead all I said was, “Freddie, let’s play things by ear, see how it works out.” A flash of something that might have been disappointment came and then disappeared on Freddie’s face, to been replaced by relief. I blinked, thinking that I must have imagined it.

 

“Yeah, we’ll see how it goes, huh?”

 

He got up and pulled on the kimono all the way. He offered me a hand. Slowly, I placed my hand in his and he pulled me up into a quick embrace. I felt naked and exposed in front of him, but also less tense than I had felt in years.

 

Freddie smiled widely and started to pull me towards the house, our hands clasped.

 

“Freddie!” I hissed, trying to free myself. “People will see!”

 

Freddie let go and threw up his hands in exasperation. “Ah, hell, they are all too drunk to notice. I just fucked you in some stranger’s backyard and now you won’t hold my hand?”

 

I laughed and shyly slipped my hand into his. As he squeezed my hand and we started to walk, I was determined to never let go.

 

_After that night, it was all over for me. I would have followed Freddie to the moon. Or back from the moon as it were. I had already given up on my thesis, but then I finally packed those papers away into my parent’s attic and I threw myself into the band. It took a lot longer for Freddie. A year and a half to break things off with Mary. Three years to tell me he loved me. Five years to completely move in together and become as close to married as was possible for us._

_I sigh. The soft drone of insects in the dark trees and my movements are the only noises in the still night. If I am completely honest with myself, I can now see all the little ways in which I held myself back, kept myself protected. Freddie took three years to say he loved me and by default I did too, too afraid to say it first. Bitter that he could make friends without my say so and that he could need other friends than me, I never let his friends become my friends. The distinction divided us. I never told him how I felt about his partying. I never told him how I felt about a lot of things._

_Since that night, everything I have done, everything I have felt and everything I have made myself into has been oriented towards Freddie. It was like gravity…the apple never thinks to reassure the ground on how it feels about the whole situation. It is just the way it works. I never thought that I may have been less than obvious to him._

_What do you do when you lose your center? How do you cope when your god reveals his fallibility and mortality in a way that is all too real and impossible to deny? To be perfectly truthful, I still don’t know the answers to those questions. I don’t know if I could really even believe it if somebody walked up and told me. There was a time that I thought that Roger could be that anchor point and there was a time that I was terrified he was beginning to creep into the vacuum torn deep into the core of me when Freddie died…or in reality, the day he told me those three awful letters._

_I pushed Roger away because I was afraid to let someone have that power over me again. Afraid to let anything violate the terrible sanctum of my one true love and my one true betrayal. I kept going back to him because I was lost and adrift without it. But I am coming to realize, slowly and painfully, that Roger would never be what Freddie was. I am no longer the same person who had fallen in love so irrevocably with the dark singer all those years ago. I am not a naïve young man anymore and I don’t have that bright burning passion. And Roger is not Freddie._

_But he can be something else, something closer to a love between equals instead of the worship a supplicant offers his deity. He is a friend and he could be a lover and that is already a hell of a lot more than most people had. Could it be that I love him? I think back on the years that we have shared and sudden moments catch in my mind. When he would laugh with Freddie over some inside joke that John pretended to be too mature for and I didn’t quite understand, I would watch him, jealous of the easy mischievousness they shared. Sometimes he would pause and glance at me, the hilarity replaced with a strange wistfulness. I remember how beautiful I thought him then, the laughter in his face fading into sadness. Sometimes we would touch by accident and I always felt awkward and shy, although I could touch other men without any such feelings._

_If you take Freddie out of all of my memories, what is left? I can recognize now what I was always too blinded by Freddie’s brilliance to notice before. Roger, always on the edges, always focused towards me. Since Freddie’s death, I have found it stubbornly difficult to believe his love, but could it be a matter of selective blindness? Planets are too small to see in the glare of their star, you know, but they exert their own gravitational pull._

_A sudden rustling patter of footsteps distracts me, just as it did on that night so very long ago. “Hey, it’s getting a bit chilly, don’t ya think?” Roger walks up from behind me and sits down on the grass heavily, forcing his legs into a partially cross-legged pose._

_“Oh, I hadn’t noticed,” I should be surprised that he is here, his physical presence intruding on my nebulous thoughts of him, but I am glad to see him and do not mind the disruption. “How was the…” I try to think of the event that occupied him tonight. “…play?” I finally manage to scrape up from my memories of half-overheard conversations and costume projects._

_“Ugh, those metal folding chairs are killer on the back. And gymnasiums do not have great acoustics for nervous 7- year olds forgetting lines. But Rory felt like a movie star, so I guess that’s what counts.” He pauses and looks at me. A soft smile touches his delicate lips. Lips I have kissed, I realize with a shock and for once I don’t detect any concern on his face. I relax a little and let the façade of cheer I try to wear around him slip. I am surprised to find my natural expression doesn’t contain the least bit of sadness. “What were you out here thinking about?” Roger asks, carefully._

_I decide to be truthful. “Stars and gods and falling in love.”_

_He laughs and gets to his feet, offering me a hand. “Of course, what else? If I stay sitting on this damp ground much longer, there will be hell to pay in the morning. I don’t know how you’ve managed being so much older.”_

_I am getting better at recognizing teasing again, I think. “Older and wiser, Taylor, and don’t you forget it.”_

_“How about we go inside and continue your philosophizing inside over a nightcap? Oh, wise one,” he offers with a grin._

_I smile back at him and take his hand. He flinches a little at my touch and I feel oddly warm. We are still trying to work out the middle ground between not touching at all and making the mistakes we made in the past. As we start back towards the house, I do not let go of his hand. Roger’s hand goes limp for a moment and then he renews his grasp. We walk towards the house together, simply holding hands. It feels good and I realize that the pleasure is independent of whether or not I remember another hand holding mine. I can stand to feel the presence of Freddie as I walk next to Roger now, unblemished by anger or guilt._

_I throw my head back and the stars look the same as they always have, although I know that they too are changing. How ephemeral and transient a thing love seems under this billions-year old sky. Lovers come together and then fall apart and the world goes on unchanged. I start to smile as I realize that love is all the more precious and wonderful for all that._


	14. Chapter 14

**November 1993**.

_I’m okay, I’m alright._

_Ain't gonna face no defeat._

_I just gotta get out of this prison cell._

_Someday I'm gonna be free, Lord!_

 

“So you actually _have_ been working on this?”

 

Roger looked at John sardonically over the tops of his shades. “See, Deak, I told you that the best way to get his butt moving was to play him the tracks and tell him we were a week out from final mixes.”

 

John smirked and paused the song Brian was listening to. “I, as always, bow before your superior wisdom, Roger.”

 

Brian rolled his eyes at the two of them snickering. “Oh, ha ha, very funny. Call me a perfectionist, how original. But really, you’ve been working on this for almost a year?”

 

“Off and on,” Roger said slowly, feeling the defensiveness of hurt pride start to creep up.

 

“Well, it’s shit.” Brian shuffled through some of John’s handwritten notes without looking up at his bandmates. “We might as well go back to Freddie’s raw recordings…”

 

“Brian, you know it isn’t as bad as all that,” John interjected, his rationality tinged with a bit of temper. “We didn’t have a lot of time to work on it because we were trying to handle other crises, but what’s there is solid.”

 

Brian colored, though whether in anger or embarrassment, it wasn’t clear to Roger. “Come on, John, it’s ages away from laying down any new tracks and there are what? Maybe _two_ songs that are any good and fully outlined. You know that.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, okay, you’ve proved we could have used your help,” Roger interjected. “But you weren’t here, were you?”

 

Brian gaped at Roger for a moment before closing his mouth with a snap and gritting out, “I’m going out for some air.” He left the studio in what could best be described as a huff. Roger watched him go, wondering rather bemusedly how he could have forgotten how touchy Brian could be while recording. In his defense, it had been a while since things had been normal. After Freddie got sick, everyone had been carefully accommodating of the frontman, but back in the day they could all really work up a good row. Thinking back, it was usually Brian who had instigated the conflicts.

 

It felt good, in a way, to see Brian like this. Every step back to his normal habits was encouraging, even the annoying ones. Although it would be better when Roger was finally convinced that Brian could take it as good as he dished it out. He was still wary of upsetting the guitarist but holding back was getting difficult and Roger could see John, with the patience of a rock, becoming fed up as well.

 

Roger fiddled with his sunglasses. Despite what the old Brian had been like, this Brian still seemed unusually tense. It wasn’t just in the studio that he was picking fights, it was when they were out for dinner and it was with Ronnie back at the rented house. If he had been anyone else, Roger would have said that he just needed a good shag, but…

 

John cleared his throat, breaking into Roger’s thoughts. “You know, the studio time isn’t actually free.”

 

Roger didn’t bother pointing out that they owned the studio. John probably knew better than anyone how much their ‘free’ studio was costing them. “Yeah, yeah,” he sighed, pushing his chair back and getting to his feet to John’s raised eyebrows. “I’ll go get him back in.”

 

Roger slowly left Mountain Studios, patting down his jacket looking for a cigarette as he shut the door behind him and ascended the stairs out into the lovely day. He found a half-empty pack in his breast pocket and nearly had one lit before he thought better of it and regretfully crumpled up the package and tossed it into a nearby rubbish bin. He took a deep breath. The day was one of those painfully bright and clear days in late fall whose very beauty seemed to threaten snowy weather ahead. The air was pleasant enough in the sunlight, but held a sharp chill in the shadows around the studio building. Roger wandered out towards the lake, reasoning that if Brian had ended up somewhere it was most likely to be there.

 

As he approached the shore, he spotted the back of a familiar curly head, seated on a bench overlooking the water. The cry of some water bird split the quiet air and masked his approach as he walked up behind the other man and then took a careful seat next to him. Brian made no sign that he noticed him but kept on staring out towards the mountains, his face impassive.

 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Brian said quietly as Roger settled himself beside him. “It’s hard to believe everything that has happened since we were last here.”

 

Roger snorted at the understatement. “Tell me about it.”

 

They looked out over the lake for a while in silence. Roger watched a small boat make its way across their sight line, the gentle, lapping waves making its progress seem faster than it actually was. He wondered if that was a metaphor for something. He was better at writing pretty sounding lyrics than applying any of their wisdom to his own life.

 

“I guess it was just setting me on edge, hearing his voice all day long.” Brian said with a sharp exhalation. “I haven’t…that is, I’ve stopped actively avoiding hearing him, but so much at once and the memories of when we were recording those vocals just seemed so fresh again…”

 

“Honestly, I thought you were just back to your old bitchy recording self,” Roger quipped, gently.

 

Brian threw his head up in surprise. “Hah. Thank you…I think?” he said and then turned away, looking thoughtful.

 

The boat had made its way to a small dock and the occupants began the long and tedious task of securing, cleaning and covering their craft. Roger carefully observed the whole process, noting when mistakes were made and tasks had to be undone and started fresh. He turned to his friend. “Ready to go back in?”

 

Brian gave a lopsided, wistful smile, looking out to the lake. “Yeah, okay.”

 

***

 

Roger let the water of the shower pour over him. He hadn’t realized how tense he was until he had gotten in here and the heat of water relaxed muscles that he didn’t even know were tight. He reached down and nudged the faucet a little hotter, steam beginning to fill the little bathroom. He breathed deeply.

 

The months since Brian’s little breakthrough of sorts had passed quickly. The two of them had fallen into something of a rhythm, doing all the things that they had never had time for when they were working, going on long drives through the countryside, bringing the kids to shamelessly touristy destinations and having long, slow dinners out at every restaurant of which Brian read a good review. Roger ran his hands over his midsection. He might even be getting a bit of a tummy. Maybe they should take up jogging.

 

Still, when John had brought up the album again, they had jumped at the chance to get out of the country and start work again. _I am going to have to figure out how I will make it forty more years without going insane._ He turned his face up to the water. _Weekly drives through Devon aren’t going to do it._

 

He heard the door to the bathroom open with a tell-tale creak. “Oi! Deaky, I’m in here. I’ll be done in a bit though,” he called. They had all decided that living together for the recording of this album felt right. It was good to be together one last time, no matter how painful the gaping hole of the fourth person who wasn’t there felt. He was starting to wish that they had looked a bit harder for the perfect place, though. The little house was a tight fit for four adults set in their ways and a seemingly endless, noisy batch of children.  His room adjoined to the Deacon’s through a shared lavatory and in his current sexually frustrated state, overhearing their nocturnal activities was getting to be too much. _Didn’t she just have a baby? Like the beginning of this year? They must be going for a baker’s dozen with the way they go at it._ At least he didn’t have to share a lav with the kids like Brian. When asked if she wanted the children in the adjoining room, Veronica had looked at them like they were insane.

 

Roger jumped as the shower curtains slid open and then was even more surprised when he saw Brian there, chewing his lip and looking determined. Roger went to grab a flannel to at least attempt to cover up, but something about Brian’s posture and expression stopped him. He opened his mouth to ask the guitarist what he was doing, but Brian beat him to it.

 

“Hey, I just wanted to apologize again for today,” Brian said, acting for all the world as if they weren’t currently in an unfairly one-sided state of dishabille. “I know I’ve put you and John through a lot and the last thing you deserve is me being a prick on top of it all.”

 

“Umm, well, mate, apology accepted, but you couldn’t have waited until I was clothed to talk to me?”

 

Brian rolled his eyes. “Like I haven’t seen you naked before,” he snorted. It was true. In that in-between phase of their career when they were actually touring and not just showing up at the gigs from home but not yet a big enough deal to warrant separate dressing rooms, there had been many changing sessions. Roger had always felt a bit guilty stealing glances at Brian. It was odd to think that Brian had been looking too.

 

“Yeah, but that was different, wasn’t it?”

 

“How was it different?” Brian asked.

 

Roger stared at Brian, incredulous. The steam was beginning to work its way into the other man’s clothes and hair. His hair relaxed and fell in damp tendrils over his face. The loose white, linen shirt that he was wearing clung to his skin wetly and Roger could make out the lines of his abdomen and the darker outlines of his nipples. He couldn’t have stopped the sudden rush of blood if he tried and he also couldn’t stop the downward drift of Brian’s gaze.

 

“I’m sorry, it’s just that…”

 

“You know, Roger, you have been treating me with kid gloves for far too long. I’m not that delicate. I’m not going to fall to pieces just because you touch me or I see that you want…” Brian fell silent, still staring at Roger’s erection. Roger didn’t dare look down at Brian’s trousers to see if they clung to him as transparently as his shirt or if an answering bulge was there.

 

Roger opened his mouth. Despite the humid air, he found that his mouth was too dry to speak. He swallowed and tried again. “Prove it.”

 

He didn’t know what he expected to see on Brian’s face. He had tried to ready himself for fear or even revulsion but he was completely unprepared for the raw and intense desire that he saw there instead. Brian’s hands went to the buttons of his shirt, fumbling with them for a moment before catching the rhythm of it and shedding the shirt with alacrity. He moved to his waistband and lingered over the fly, slowly unzipping it. Roger thought that his heart was going to beat so fast that it would spring out his throat and escape his body.

 

Brian struggled to push the tight jeans off in the steam and then stepped out of them and paused. Roger finally allowed himself to take in the full sight and as his gaze lingered over the lines of Brian’s hips, his cock standing out abruptly from his body, the tip glistening more wetly than the rest of his body, he knew that he had been right. This _was_ different than stolen peeks around the rest of the band, this was Brian, naked and alone, aroused and wanting _him_. He took a faltering gasp of humid air. It nearly made him choke.

 

Brian quickly stepped into the bathtub and shoved Roger against the wall, the tile shockingly cold along his backside. Roger slipped on the wet enamel as the impact unbalanced him but the weight of Brian’s body kept him on his feet. He turned his face up to the taller man in reflex and Brian captured his mouth with a force and desperation that left Roger helpless in his onslaught and barely able to keep up.

 

Roger knew all too well the exact moment when Brian had ended all their previous attempts at physicality. When his arousal was right on the edge of becoming too much for him to control, he would always shut it down and walk away. Now, here in the shower, the water cascading over his face conspiring with Brian’s hungry mouth wrestling with his to make it completely impossible to breathe and Brian’s hot erection pressing insistently against his thigh, he felt nearly sure that things were going to go differently this time. He wondered how things had changed. _Gaddamn it, Taylor, that is a bloody stupid question. You saw the change happening. It took months. It was hard fought, on both our parts._ He wondered if he was in shock.

 

He broke away from the other man. “Are you completely sure about this?” he gasped out. “We don’t have to rush…”

 

“Fuck, Roger. Just shut up for one second. I want this. Let me be in control for once in my life.”

 

Brian turned him around with more force than was wise in their slick environment. Roger skidded, catching his elbow against the soap dish. Brian’s hands went to his hips, steadying him. He barely had time to recover from the shock of the impact and brace himself against the wall before Brian entered him in one clean thrust.

 

The both gasped at how deep he went, their wet skin was as slippery as any lubricant. Completely unprepared, Roger felt every centimeter of Brian’s progress, magnified and in detail.

 

“Oh, God, you’re even warmer…unnghh, Roger, you’re so fucking tight…”

 

Roger wasn’t prepared for how his name said in that way by Brian would sound and coupled with the sensations that were clambering up from Brian’s delving cock and using his spinal cord as a jungle gym, he was a wreck.

 

“Ple—please, oh God, please,” he found himself sobbing over and over again. He clung to the faucet head with the numb strength left in his fingers and concentrated on keeping his knees and elbows from collapsing and not the terrible pleasure racing through his body.

 

He focused on Brian’s hands on his hips and the way that his long fingers tensed hard into his skin a fraction of a second before each thrust. It was his only warning and brace before another pulse of pure electric feeling would overtake him. Brian was hitting his prostate with a pinpoint accuracy Roger really should have expected from the other man. He expected that it was a rather large logical leap, though, from observing that Brian was technical and precise in his guitar playing to speculating that he might be able to efficiently fuck a man into a quivering lump of jelly.

 

“Can you come on just my cock?” Brian growled into his ear. Roger rather thought that _not_ coming was quickly becoming the issue, but he wasn’t about to voice that dilemma.

 

“It’s b—been…uhngh…known to happen,” he stammered.

 

“Good, then you’ll get to come.” It was not something that Roger had ever imagined Brian saying and it sent a thrill through him that made his fingertips go numb. _Ah, yes,_ he thought _, because the rest of this encounter was so predictable_.

 

Brian shoved forward harder, jarring Roger from his thoughts and bringing him back to the matter at hand. A sharp pleasure was spreading through his groin, building with each of Brian’s thrusts until he nearly wanted to beg the other man to stop, to slow down, to go faster, anything to break the slow tension. He was teetering on the edge and he knew that anything might finish him.

 

“Oh, Roger…s—so sweet,” Brian moaned, his voice echoing off the tile. “Fuck, I’ve needed this.”

 

“Please…come, Brian. I c—can’t take much more.”

 

Brian rocked forward, slid slightly on the wet porcelain and fell against Roger, burying himself deeper than ever. Roger gasped and involuntarily clenched against the intrusion. Brian sobbed out his name and then was coming in hard staccato pulses that wrenched against Roger’s sensitized muscles. The hot flood of Brian’s seed filling his insides like the water drenching his body was all that it took. His orgasm came fast and blinding, he was aware that he was breathing too hard, but he couldn’t seem to slow his desperate panting. He felt like his neurons were firing randomly all over his body, bursting in bright, electric fireworks. Most overwhelming was the feeling of Brian inside of him, not just in his ass, but as a pool of golden heat filling his gut and rising to his heart, making it beat not only faster but deeper and with a fuller sense of purpose than ever before.

 

***

 

The two rock stars lay in Roger’s bed, a trail of scattered towels leading to the bathroom where they had drained the flat of every last drop of hot water. Roger thought he might not move for a week. Brian had said little as they dried off, that familiar introspective shuttering in his eyes and now a fear was creeping up on Roger, relentless and nagging.

 

“I’m not just a piece of ass to _you,_ right? I might be ‘incapable of a serious relationship,’ as you say, but I don’t think I could bear…that is, now that I have had this, I don’t think I could stand to let…” Roger ducked his head and pressed his face into the pillow, suddenly overcome with the emotion of the encounter, of all the pent up anticipation of it all and, curiously, with that singular desolation that comes the day after Christmas when all the pretty paper lies crumpled on the floor and the packages that seemed so bright with promise the day before turned out to just contain more ties than you could ever want and a biscuit assortment two months past its sell-by date.

 

“Oh, Roger.” Brian sighed, pityingly. He paused as if deciding how to say something and then went on. “How many people have you slept with?”

 

Roger half-laughed, half-gasped in surprise, turning over to look at the other man. “I won’t answer that,” he protested. Brian just waited, his face carefully neutral and non-judgmental. Roger sighed and rubbed his face. “In actual point of fact, I _can’t_ answer that,” he mumbled, painfully aware of the flush creeping up his neck. _It never fails, huh?_ he told himself, _one day you’re comparing conquests with Bill Wyman or Rod Stewart and you feel like a complete loser and the next you’re getting grilled by Brian May of all people and you’re the biggest slut to ever take the stage._

 

“Well, as of this very moment, I’ve slept with two. Maybe that gives you some idea what a big fucking deal this is to me.” He didn’t look at Roger as he spoke but his voice broke over the expletive. “When I kissed you that first time, I don’t think that I consciously realized why I did that. But in that kiss, it became clear to me that I _was_ attracted to you. But two questions remained, was it okay to be attracted to someone else so soon after…well, after Freddie and _why_ was I attracted to you? You who had been my friend for so long, who I had never suspect might be anything more…”

 

“Brian, you don’t have to…”

 

“Shut up, Roger, I am trying to tell you something,” Brian said quickly yet calmly. “I guess I did a spectacularly bad job of answering that first question. Freddie _tried_ to give me his absolution, but I wasn’t listening. I don’t think I could have even believed him before working it out in my own pig-headed, self-destructive way.

 

“But why was I attracted to you of all people? On one hand it wasn’t hard to understand, you’re gorgeous, always have been, funny and charming. Who wouldn’t want you? _Countless_ people have, after all, by your own admission.”

 

Roger pulled the covers up over his face. “Oh, _God_ ,” he groaned.

 

Brian made a dismissive gesture. “You’ve always been my closest friend. Freddie was…I loved Freddie more than I can put into words, but everything was always fire and ice with Freddie. Freddie was either fighting or fucking, having the best time of his life or the worst. Freddie was exhausting.” Brian pulled the blanket away from Roger and ran his hand down Roger’s chest. It gave him an illicit thrill to know that _Brian_ was touching him, that _Brian_ was naked in his bed. His cock twitched and he marveled at his body’s speed of recovery. Brian sighed and went on. “He was my lover but I’m not sure he was ever my friend. To be honest, I always envied that you could have such an easy friendship with him. I had nearly convinced myself it was because you two _weren’t_ lovers, but, well, never mind.”

 

“What about John?” Roger asked to change the topic although he felt like he knew what the answer would be.

 

“John…well, John was Freddie’s friend. I always, and still do, admired John. But I knew that everything that I told him or did around him would get back to Freddie. It was a wall we both knew was there.”

 

“I felt the same thing. You could only ever be second best to John.” That wasn’t quite fair. “Now, don’t get me wrong, being John’s second best friend was a lot better than being many people’s best friend, but you still felt it.”

 

Brian propped his head up on his hand and Roger could see a dawning respect in his face. “I should have confided in you more. It would have helped, I think.”

 

“I do have good advice. Sometimes.”

 

“I love you for all the ways you aren’t like me. For your unselfish devotion to your friends, your work. Your willingness to put your ego aside and your self-deprecating poise. And I love you for the ways you are nothing like Freddie. That was the hardest thing to come to terms with, I think. It felt so—so wrong, like his death had given me the opportunity to trade up for a better model. But I think that I have convinced myself that there isn’t better, just different and it’s _okay_ to love that _we_ don’t start fighting if we are left alone too long together, that the things I want matter to you and that you will calmly let me have my temper tantrum in the studio and then just get on with things.” Brian gave a shaky laugh.

 

Roger felt a bit overwhelmed. For someone who didn’t talk about their feelings much, Brian seemed to have decided to throw open the floodgates. “Is that everything?”

 

“I’ve had a lot of time to think.”

 

“Always dangerous for you,” Roger said sardonically.

 

“And of course there are the less philosophical reasons also.” Brian pushed back the covers and threw one long leg over the drummer, pinning Roger’s legs together as he straddled him. “I love your big beautiful eyes, the way that you can all at once look so innocent and so very guilty. I love your body, the way you look from behind playing the tympani.” Brian paused and leaned down to lick a long line up Roger’s chest, ending with a soft kiss behind Roger’s ear. Their cocks slid together as Brian moved and it was as if Roger hadn’t just had the orgasm of his life twenty minutes ago. He was immediately panting and needy again. Brian’s lips hovered near his ear, just brushing it and making the hair rise on the back of his neck. He whispered, “And I love the way your legs look in a skirt.”

 

“Oh, God,” Roger moaned and bucked upward. “No-one is ever going to let that rest, are they?”

 

Brian slid down Roger’s body, the warm friction of his skin heating every part of Roger that he touched. “It’s just a transformative experience for people. Of course they remember.”

 

Roger shoved Brian’s shoulder lightly. “Oh, shut the fuck up!” he laughed. Brian looked up and gave him a crooked smile and then swallowed Roger whole, effectively granting his demand. “Ah, fuck!” he gasped out as the warm wetness enveloped him and he could feel the tip of his cock bumping the back of Brian’s throat.

 

Moving slowly, Brian took his time, keeping Roger just off-balance enough that he couldn’t build a satisfying rhythm. He took advantage of the delay and luxuriated in Brian’s tongue firmly stroking the sensitive underside of his cock and occasionally swirling around the head. Then Brian urged his hips to hitch up a little and sent his free hand delving lower, cupping Roger’s balls and running a finger around the edge of his entrance.

 

“A—ahh, yes, right there. Oh, Brian,” he moaned and thrilled at the burst of sensation caused by the delicate touch on that sensitized region. Roger gave in to the well-worn fantasy that was just one detail from becoming reality and buried his hands in the deep, thick thatch of Brian’s hair.

 

It was taking every fiber of will in his body to keep from driving with reckless abandon into that wet, pretty mouth. Brian seemed to sense his tension because he paused in his ministrations and looked up at the drummer. With his lips slick and swollen and his eyes dilated and liquid, Roger thought he had never seen him look so good.

 

“Just let go, Roger,” he husked. Roger didn’t need a second invitation. He flipped Brian onto his back and thrust fully into his mouth.

 

“Okay?” he asked, barely holding himself back.

 

“Mmm hmm,” Brian mumbled with a ‘get on with in’ gesture. The vibrations made Roger go cross-eyed in the effort not to come right then and there. He started to move, slowly at first and then surrendering to the rhythm that his body craved. All the little things, the rich heat of Brian’s mouth, his firm stroking just behind Roger’s balls, his other hand clasped lightly on Roger’s ass cheek and the soft gasps and groans that escaped him every time that Roger withdrew, were seamlessly melding and melting into one overpowering surge that built somewhere deep inside of Roger. As it crested, filling his chest, rushing up to fill his skull and make his scalp tingle with the power of it, he realized he was coming, his cock desperately pumping in an effort to keep pace with the tide. Brian swallowed and the muscles of his throat rung the last of his orgasm from Roger as his trembling arms gave way and he fell onto his side.

 

He felt dazed, a black haze dancing across his vision, but he could just barely make out Brian getting to his hands and knees, swollen cock demanding attention. Roger attempted to make some move in that direction but Brian pushed him down firmly onto his back and rubbed himself up the length of Roger’s body, falling into a slow and easy rocking motion against his chest. The pre-come leaking from him left slick trails across Roger’s skin that lubricated his thrusts.

 

Roger rested his hands lightly on the backs of Brian’s thighs. He relaxed and took the time to simply enjoy the view and the heady, animal smell of the other man, his body rutting against him.

 

“Uh—hh, I can’t last…what you did to me…”

 

“What did I do to you, Brian?”

 

“You in my mouth. The taste of you coming down my throat. I could barely stop from coming right…” Brian shoved hard against Roger’s chest, the muscles in his rear tensing and jumping under Roger’s hands. “…ungh, right there.”

 

“Come for me, Brian.”

 

Brian inhaled sharply at the words and then hitched up Roger’s body. Roger could just barely get a swipe in with his tongue on the smooth tip of Brian if he strained. The last few thrusts slammed him back deeper into the bed, Brian’s toes scrambling for more purchase.

 

“Oh, God. Oh, _Roger!_ ” Brian called out in a strangled cry and then it was all over.

 

The sight of Brian coming inches away from his face was perhaps the most beautiful sight he had ever witnessed. He let out a sob at the loveliness of it all as Brian collapsed forward onto him. Luxuriating in the warm weight of the other man, Roger drifted for a stretch of lazy and content time before practical matters started weighing in.

 

“Umm, this is wonderful and all, but in a few minutes we are going to be glued together.”

 

“Ugh, I can’t move,” Brian groaned. “We will just have to accept our fate.”

 

Roger laughed and rolled Brian off him with a grunt. He fished around off the side of the bed for the abandoned towels and tossed one to Brian. They fell into an easy silence as they both went about cleaning up to varying degrees. Roger gave it a couple swipes and called it good, while Brian was a bit more fastidious.

 

Roger collapsed into the bed again, wondering if he was going to have to get dressed to get some food or if they could con Deaky into ordering something in. Spending the evening holed up here sounded pretty good. He glanced over at Brian, who had finished his ablutions and laid back down next to him. _Next to me in bed_ , Roger thought, _that sounds pretty good too_.

 

Brian stared up at the ceiling, his hands under the pillow cradling his head. Roger watched him, starting out wondering what he was thinking but then getting distracted by the way his still damp hair fell into soft waves around his face. It made him look younger, reminding Roger of when he was just growing it out and how Brian complained when it was in that unruly, in between stage.

 

Brian glanced at him and a slightly wistful look crossed his face. “You almost told me once, didn’t you? When I phoned you that time after Freddie didn’t show at the meeting…umm, after the Magic tour.”

 

Roger knew exactly what he was talking about. “It was a moment of weakness. You sounded so sad.”

 

“I’m glad you didn’t. It would have made things…more complicated.”

 

“Look, Brian, I’m sorry if I have been acting awkward, treating you too delicately or whatever. It’s hard, you didn’t have to see yourself, sprawled out on that floor…” he inhaled sharply, surprised by the emotions that he thought he had excised. His chest felt tight and his stomach seemed to be attempting to escape his body by way of his throat.

 

Brian sat up and looked at the drummer with sympathy mingled with surprise. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I just couldn’t see any other way of stopping myself from hurting.”

 

Roger reached out and pulled Brian towards himself. The other man’s weight and warmth felt just right against his chest and dispelled the tension. “You idiot, this seems to be working, huh?” he whispered affectionately into Brian’s hair. “You’ve always been short-sighted. And anyway, I couldn’t bear to lose you, not after we’ve lost…”

 

Brian raised his head and silenced Roger by pressing his lips to his bandmate’s. The kiss was slow and deep and Roger was finally able to concentrate on the sensation of Brian instead of being distracted by the intellectual ramifications. It felt _good_.

 

Brian pulled away and smiled, a high flush staining his cheeks. “You know, the mixes aren’t _that_ bad, actually.”

 

Roger raised an eyebrow at him. “I bet you say that to every pretty face you fuck, handsome.”

 

Roger’s yelp as he hit the ground after Brian shoved him off the bed was muffled by the sound of Brian’s uproarious laughter.

 

 

***

**October 1997**

 

“Well, this is it, lads, this is the last thing that I will ever do with Queen,” John said, with a quick smile and quiet thank you to the makeup lady as he adjusted his shirt and took his bass from an assistant.

 

Roger felt a painful constriction in his throat. He always hated the end of things, he found he almost never knew how to say goodbye. He glanced at John. His face was impassive as ever, with only with a faint smile touching his lips.

 

“Are you sure you want your last thing _ever_ to be recording a music video? That’s just awful, you need to come back and do a tour or something.” Roger wheedled.

 

John only rolled his eyes. Roger shrugged. His abilities to persuade John of anything had always been less than impressive.

 

“Well, as long as you don’t piss off to some little hamlet to live as a hermit,” Brian commented, tuning his guitar reflexively. Roger remembered the time Brian had been angry at Freddie during a filming of some music video or other and had done all his mining with a horribly out of tune guitar. They had all wanted to throttle him by the end of that. “And the only times we hear about you are from rather dubious pub sightings.”

 

“Yeah,” Roger chimed in. “And the only way we can get a response is by threatening to put Brian in charge of the money.”

 

John looked up at Roger sharply. “Swear to me you will never put Brian in charge of the money,” he said seriously.

 

“Hey! I take offense to that. My finances are in excellent shape…well, considering that they were joint with Freddie’s for so long, they are in _pretty_ good shape.”

 

“I’ll be in charge if you want,” Roger said blithely. “I hear vintage sports cars are an excellent investment opportunity.”

 

John looked up to the ceiling and sighed. “Oh, God, I am going to have to hang around every tour or charity event or _Broadway production_ you two morons ever come up with, aren’t I?”

 

Roger winked at Brian, “Exactly.” John looked like he wanted to keep protesting but he was interrupted by Hannes clapping his hands and shoving through a knot of camera crewmen.

 

“Okay, okay, everybody! Listen up, we are going to try and get this in as few takes as possible. We want it to seem organic and spontaneous. Guys, do you want to just run through with the track in one go to get the mining down? We can worry about individual shots later and some of the footage should be usable,” the director said.

 

“Sounds good,” Brian replied, looking round at the other two for confirmation. “You want me doing at the piano or the guitar for the first run?”

 

“Let’s do piano for now and see how it looks.”

 

Roger ran a hand through his hair, undoing everything the poor woman who had been fussing over him the last fifteen minutes had tried to accomplish. He settled himself behind the drum kit and tried to remember the last time he had actually been filmed for a Queen music video and realized with a shock that it had been for Days of Our Lives. They had been relying on compilations of old footage for quite some time.

 

Miming the drums was easy enough work and Roger let his mind wander, watching Brian and John absently. Brian had that hard look of concentration he always had while working. Roger wondered why something so familiar as Brian’s expression could have such a different implication singing these words. He had been shocked at how personal the lyrics had been when Brian first showed them to him, he had tried to rewrite them, unwilling to let the world see so much of their souls. Seeing John so impassive but stealing more long, slow looks at the two of them than he normally would made Roger wonder if he had changed the song enough.

 

He forgot about all the other people in the room. He forgot about the cameras and the lights. His world narrowed down to two people and a song about the person who wasn’t there.

 

It was only as the music died away that Roger realized he was holding himself too tensely and John wasn’t holding himself together at all.

 

 “God!” John gasped as the last notes of the song echoed through the room. He dropped his unpowered bass and it fell from his numb hands with a dull clatter. Roger was partially aware of Rudi motioning for cut and quietly beginning to shoo people from the room.

 

“Oh, John,” Brian said, rising from the piano and going over to the other man.

 

“It’s just…it’s that…it has never felt _over_ until…” John stammered.

 

_Watching Brian holding John, tears streaking down all of our faces, I thought about all that we had been through. It was if it had been eons ago I had slipped in the side door of a crematorium, trying desperately to come to grips with the boulder that had been hurled into the placid pond of my life. The look on Brian’s face as he sat alone in the crowd of that funeral was seared into my memory. I knew now that all the shit that was about to go down had been prophesied right there in his expression. So much time and emotions spent trying to cling to something that had died right alongside Freddie Mercury. The words of Brian’s song reverberated in my head._

Cryin’ for no-one…no-one but you.

 

We’ll remember…forever.

 

Life goes on…without you.

_There are rare moments in time when you feel absolutely in sync with another human being. When what is happening in your head lines up perfectly with the emotions of another and all those guessing games and uncertainty that take up so much time and energy in our dealings with other people just disappear and you finally know what it means to love someone as yourself. These moments are why I will never be able to give up the performance as John has done, because there is something about making music together in a band that makes is so much easier to slip inside each other’s heads like that._

_As I saw the sorrow on John and Brian’s faces and as their tears began to slowly quiet, I felt a powerful catharsis. I knew that we would never stop missing Freddie, but the bone that had mended badly had been rebroken and finally set properly. Any pain now would be the clean, wholesome pain of healing as our battered relationships slowly knitted themselves back together. I saw the shadows in Brian’s eyes, I saw the ghost of a stage with John’s stalwart presence missing and I knew that there would always be scars. But you can’t live your live fully without risking some scars and that is the greatest lesson I have learned from Freddie Mercury._

_Brian raised his head from John’s shoulder and smiled at me and I knew then, of all the things Freddie had given me, what his greatest gift was._

_So you can see what it took for us to be able to sing this._


	15. Chapter 15

**Epilogue**

**November 2011**.

_Love of my life, you've hurt me_

_You've broken my heart and now you leave me_

_You'll remember when this is blown over and everything's all by the way_

_When I grow older, I will be there at your side to remind you how I still love you_

_I still love you_

 

The small stone bench still stood in the same place that it had for decades and although the spent annuals threw slightly different colors in slightly different places, the roses were the same. The fall had been long and unusually warm, a lush Indian summer which had coaxed late blooms from the old canes. The flowers were ripe and full, like a woman in the last, overblown expression of her prime, spilling petals out across the gravel paths of Garden Lodge. It was the kind of weather that made one forget about the chill to come and linger on reminiscing just as the proof of the summer’s bounty was also slow to fade.

 

The last golden rays of afternoon filtered through the remaining crimson leaves of a graceful Japanese maple tree. In the patch of sunlight draped languorously across the bench, it was actually quite warm for November. The air was still but for the quiet murmur of a fountain not yet winterized and the rustle of sparrows searching the fallen leaves for seeds or a carelessly dropped crumb.

 

Brian sat on the bench and watched the roses and the sparrows, allowing his mind to wander aimlessly. He could hear the sounds of the dinner party coming from the house behind him, noises that grew increasingly loud as the freely flowing bottles of wine caught up with the participants. No-one had acted concerned when he had quietly excused himself to catch a breath of air, although he had felt eyes following him out of the dining room.

 

He felt as though he sat next to the memory of himself sitting on this very bench, the ghostly presence of the past made a slight chill run across his skin and then disappear. What a difference nearly two decades made after all. He barely recognized that ghost of himself, barely remembered the turmoil and frigid wind he had sat in all those years ago. The weather was not the only change the intervening years had brought.

 

Brian couldn’t believe that Freddie had been gone for twenty years. He still felt that every memory was so crisp, as if it had all happened yesterday and Freddie might walk through the door at any moment. He would catch himself hesitating at the store, nearly picking up Freddie’s favorite candy bar or favorite colored shirt, before slowing unclenching his hand and backing away. At the same time, he found certain things slipping. Someone would ask him, oh, what would Freddie do about this, what did Freddie do on this occasion or that, and he would reach for the memory and find it missing.

 

He had struggled for a long time after painfully forgiving the other man to forgive himself for the years and months of time together that he had wasted in his anger and his hurt. To have come to the place where he could be at peace with the inevitableness of that response to injury and yet lose the memories of the good time seemed like a cruel joke. He had started a journal to write down all the scraps that he could recall. Roger sometimes found him at his desk, helplessly laughing while tears streamed down his face. On those occasions, they would trade tissues and stories until early in the morning and sleep the day away wrapped in each other’s arms.

 

Before he could stop himself, he ran through the figures in his head, double-checked his math and blanched. The impossible had happened, an anniversary passed without him even noticing. Somewhere along the way as the years had swept by, the balance had tipped. He had been living with Roger longer than he and Freddie had been together and soon Queen would hit the same milestone. It was unbelievable.

 

“I thought I might find you here,” Mary’s voice roused him from his reverie. Brian smiled up at her and shifted over to make room on the bench. She sat down and gazed out over the gardens. “Lovely weather, isn’t it?”

 

Brian nodded. “I was enjoying the party, Mary, just wanted a little time alone to think. We can go in if you like.”

 

“Don’t apologize, I understand,” she said with a small smile and gently patted his hand. “This time of year is always hard. Although I prefer to have a little company over to keep from feeling lonely. I still miss him so much.”

 

Brian winced a little. The gathering of Freddie’s closest friends and family typically took place at Garden Lodge every year a week from now. This year was the first time that the timing hadn’t worked out for Brian and Roger. Brian felt guilty that the party had been moved on their account but the celebration of Felix’s thesis defense was not something that they could miss.

 

“Will you be alright here alone, Mary? I’m sorry that we had to move the date…”

 

“I’ll be fine. I will have my family around and every year gets easier. It’s hard to believe how many little bit easier anniversaries there have been, isn’t it, Brian?”

 

“Inconceivable,” Brian replied with feeling.

 

“That rawness I felt after we lost him is gone, you know? But I still just miss him being _around_. Freddie wasn’t always easy to be with, but he was always exciting and he was usually just _fun_ ,” she said, looking a bit misty. Brian looked at the woman whom he had come to consider a very close friend. They had always gotten along well. People always expected him to feel threatened by Freddie’s former lover, but maybe it was because she was a woman or because Freddie had picked well and she was simply a likable person. But he couldn’t deny that their relationship had developed after Freddie’s death. When they no longer related to each other _through_ Freddie, they could become real friends.

 

“Do you remember when he wanted to go to all those operas dressed in period from when they were written? Everyone was looking at us like space aliens.” Brian shook his head. “That was hard, exciting and fun.”

 

“Oh, God. People expected it of Freddie, but when you’d go away to the restroom or something…” she dissolved into laughter. Brian smiled. “See, I’ll be fine. Anyway, you are the one who needs to stay safe with all the travel…”

 

He laughed. Mary had never quite kicked her fear of flying. “I will as long as Roger remembers which side of the road to drive on,” he promised.

 

“Oi! I heard that.” Roger came around a bend in the path holding a glass of champagne and a notepad. “Maybe I’ll make you drive, since you’re so smart.”

 

“Not if you want to make it anywhere on time,” Mary jibbed.

 

Brian rolled his eyes as they laughed at his expense. “Just because I like to see the sights as I go and not hurdle on in a blur…”

 

“Anyway, I was sent to fetch you two,” Roger said with an expansive gesture. “We are about to do the toast and, Brian, you are up to play Michael in the Scrabble tournament.”

 

“What happened to you?” Brian asked, surprised.

 

“Ah, he kicked my ass with a double-double. It was a hard fought battle up to then, though. Then it just got bloody.”

 

“Who’s left on the other side?”

 

“Jer…that old lady cheats, I swear, the one time of year we see her…” Roger shook his head. “And your Jamie, Mary. He annihilated Rory, she was distracted making her pie.” Roger made a face and mouthed, _don’t eat the pie_.

 

Brian got up with a laugh and offered a hand to Mary. “Well, let’s go then. We still have to pack for the New York trip. After I defend my title in the 17th Annual Mercury Memorial Cup champion, of course…”

 

***

 

Brian collapsed on the bed in the hotel suite with a groan. He was exhausted and the slight tension in his head that had building through the whole flight had blossomed into a full blown headache. “How is it possible that just sitting in a plane for eight hours can be so much work? Travel couldn’t have possibly been this bad when we were touring all the time.”

 

Roger glanced over at him from where he was hanging up their clothes. Brian was glad that for most of his adult live he had lived with people more concerned about the state of his clothing than he was. “Well, I know one way to help you relax,” he said with a suggestive wag of his eyebrows.

 

Brian snorted into the pillow. “God, you’re insatiable, Taylor.”

 

“It’s just that now that I have you, I want to get my money’s worth.”

 

Brian laughed. His thoughts from back at Garden Lodge came back to him. “Do you know what I was thinking back at Mary’s party? We’ve been together four years longer than I was with Freddie. Next year, Queen will have been around as long without Freddie as with him.”

 

Roger climbed onto the bed slowly and straddled Brian, his hands starting to work out knots of tension in the other man. Brian moaned gratefully. “God, you’re right,” Roger marveled. “It sure doesn’t feel that way, does it? Those days seem endless in my memory.”

 

Brian nodded. Most days he knew exactly how much time had passed since Freddie died. He felt the years in the way the intense, breathtaking pain had faded to a dull ache. Most days he could talk about him easily, but some days a twinge would still radiate through him like the sting of landing on an ankle just wrong.

 

“Here, I can’t do this with your clothes in the way. Strip,” Roger ordered. They clumsily untangled and Brian struggled out of his shirt and trousers. He noted the way that Roger’s eyes still darkened and lingered on his nude form even after all these years. It made a warm burst of pleasure spread through his core and he couldn’t help but preen and pose a little under the other man’s gaze, stretching out on the cool white sheets of the hotel bed. “You vain thing,” Roger said with a laugh and a light swat to Brian’s backside. “When did you go from not knowing how beautiful you are to knowing far too well?”

 

Brian sighed into the pillow as Roger began his ministration again, this time with the added benefit of warm skin to skin contact. “Since you stated telling me every day for the last eighteen years. One of us is smart, you know. We have Ph.D’s.”

 

“Oh, shut the fuck up!”

 

“Make me,” Brian replied.

 

“Alright, I accept that challenge,” Roger said, huskily and returned his attention to Brian’s body. The massage started to deepen and become more sensual, lips and tongue joined the knead of hands and areas other than Brian’s back started to receive the lion’s share of attention. Brian luxuriated in the attention of the other man. It was just what he needed after the long flight and the emotionalism of this time of year.

 

His arousal built as slowly as the massage, unfurling gradually and naturally so that by the time that Roger slipped inside him, he was just on the edge of aching for it. This was no ‘fuck me now, harder,’ although they still enjoyed those sessions when the mood struck. No, this was something that had to be built on the experience of years, the knowledge of each tender spot, of how far and exactly how fast it could go without all coming crashing down. Until that perfect moment and then the climax would come even more sweet from the long, drawn out build up.

 

They rocked together, slow and easy, not rushing but enjoying the smooth slide of flushed skin on skin. Roger pushed a hand between the bed and Brian’s stomach and Brian lifted his hips just enough to allow him to wrap his fingers tightly around the guitarist’s cock. Brian moaned as he lowered himself against the sheets and thrust into the tightness of Roger’s hand. The close pressure of the position and the tight stretch of Roger’s barely thrusting cock were conspiring to push him to the edge faster than he liked.

 

“Roger…” he said, his voice low and quavering just a bit.

 

“It’s okay, I’m close too,” Roger whispered back against his ear.

 

A few more breaths, taken in unison and then it was over. Their release was quiet, but what it lacked in screamed intensity, it more than made up for in that special bonding magic of harmony. They lay together for a long time afterward, Roger unwinding inside of Brian with butterfly delicate shudders.

 

Roger pulled Brian in for a tight hug. “Now you fuck me,” he whispered.

 

Brian groaned. “Oh God, how can you even _say_ that?” He felt perfectly relaxed, albeit a tad sticky and he had absolutely no activation energy for another go.

 

Roger laughed and heaved himself up and out of the bed, toweling off and dressing with enviable verve and efficiency. Even after all these years, Brian still took Roger’s jokes too seriously, a fact that simply added to the other man’s endless amusement. “I’m going to go see if there are any…” Roger glanced around until he spotted the room’s alarm clock. “…lunch plans.”

 

“Okay, but can I get a shower before we go anywhere?” The sticky was really starting to nag on Brian.

 

“Sure, I’ll see if Rory wants to grab drinks. We’ll meet you down in the lobby…that is, unless I change my mind about a repeat.”

 

“I’m getting into the shower now,” Brian warned and closed the door before he could hear anymore of Roger’s cackles.

 

The hot, steamy shower finished the work that the sex had started and by the time he was toweling off, he felt much more like a human being. He tried to ignore his jetlagged body telling him it was past bedtime. As he reluctantly pulled on clothes, Brian thought that Roger’s idea of another go and then blessed sleep sounded pretty damn good.

 

He heard movement in the sitting area of the suite. _That’s odd,_ he thought, _I thought Roger had gone down to the lobby already._

 

“Come back for round two, huh?” he called, leering to himself. “I didn’t think you had it in you anymore, you old dog.”

 

“Umm, uh—no, it’s Rory.” A blonde, _female_ head poked around the edge of the bedroom doorframe as irrefutable proof. “Dad forgot his wallet and the bartender was less inclined to give us free drinks when there was no chance of a big tip.”

 

Brian felt the blood rush to his face. He sat down hard on the edge of the bed. “Oh God, Rory, I’m so sorry…” he buried his head in his hands, unable to look at the young woman in his embarrassment. _It’s bad enough hearing your parents talk about sex_ , he thought. _You at least have to acknowledge they did it at least once per child. But your dad’s male lover…?_

 

Rory raised her eyebrows and smirked a little. “Brian, you have shared a bedroom with my dad since I was seven. I do have some idea how these things must work.”

 

“Oh, _God_ ,” Brian groaned again.

 

Rory simply laughed at his mortification and perched lightly on the bed next to him. “It _was_ an education.”

 

Brian felt a rush of guilt. Roger rarely gave a thought to how his relationships might affect his children, but Brian had worried a lot while they were growing up. He had let go of most of that when they had turned out to be stable and bright young people, but it came creeping back now. “Look, Rory, I am so sorry that you had to go through all of this, with your dad and mum and then me…well, it must have been hard not to have a normal family…a _real_ family.”

 

Rory’s face grew serious. “Mum always worried that I would suffer from not having a father in my life, what with the divorce and Dad being on the road all the time. But I have had double luck because I have had the two best fathers a girl could ever hope for.” She got to her feet, leaned over and planted a kiss on the top of his head. “And that was ‘a real family,’ Brian. And a damn sight better than the traditional ones some people get. Now let’s stop this nonsense and go get something to eat.”

 

***

 

“Are you sure this is okay? It isn’t optimal, I know, but my committee members…” Felix was an uncharacteristic bundle of nerves. He kept rubbing his hands down the front of the suit he was wearing instead of the more typical grad student attire of free t-shirts from product fairs and ratty old jeans stained with bleach and crystal violet.

 

Brian laughed, they had already been round on the topic with Felix when they booked their flight. “You can’t change it now, can you?”

 

Felix was watching a cluster of professors and students down the hall walking into the auditorium where his talk would be held. And then after that would be the closed defense of his thesis to committee and Brian knew the slow but insistent anxiety of that. For all that everyone you that if your committee said that you were ready to defend they wouldn’t fail you, you couldn’t help but think of the ramifications if you _were_ the first to fail…no wonder Felix was nervous.

 

“It’s just that I really didn’t want to ruin Freddie’s day…he is so important and you and Dad have had your traditions for so long…”

 

“Freddie did mean a lot to us back then. Especially to me.” Brian sighed and took the young man by his shoulders. Felix blinked in surprise and focused on Brian. “But, Felix, you mean a lot to us _right now_. The past is over and done and the present is all about you and what you’ve accomplished. So don’t be silly, of course we want to be here for this. No matter what else this day signifies.”

 

Felix looked away and Brian recognized the same habits Roger had when he was trying not to be too emotional. “Dad gave me…he gave me a lot, the confidence and the means to try and discover something that no-one else had ever known. He gave me the humor you need to handle the bruises this profession deals to your ego.” Felix laughed a little and then drew a deep breath. “But it was you, Brian, who inspired me to actually consider becoming this. You taught me a curiosity about the world and a love for science and I don’t know what I would have become if you had never been in my life. Thank you.”

 

Brian swallowed a bit thickly and hugged the boy he had come to think of as his son. Who was now a man and had been growing and blossoming before their eyes for quite some time now. “Go, you are going to be late.”

 

Felix cleared his throat and smiled. “Yeah. Find Dad and make sure he didn’t get distracted hitting on some poor tech or something.”

 

“Oh, God,” Brian moaned, thankful for the break in tension. Felix laughed and headed to the auditorium.

 

Brian watched Felix go, smiling softly to himself. To be honest, he wasn’t sure that he could have been more proud of the young man if he _was_ his own son. He didn’t think that his heart could take it. He heard a rustle and looked over into a small alcove off of the main hallway leading to the restrooms. Roger stood there, also watching Felix walk off to his defense.

 

“How long have you been standing there?”

 

“Long enough.”

 

“You don’t…I mean, you don’t…”

 

“Mind? Brian, don’t be ridiculous. Of course, I don’t mind that because of you my kid turned out to be a brilliant and promising scientist. If it had been up to me, he would have probably ended up following in my footsteps and been a half-hearted dentist or a hack drummer.”

 

Brian couldn’t help the grin from spreading across his face. He stepped into the alcove and caught Roger’s wrists. He pressed them to his chest, inhaling the other man’s scent. “Oh, come on. You probably could have been a decent dentist.”

 

Roger barked out a surprised laugh. He pushed Brian away and into the opposite wall, following closing to capture his mouth into a crushing kiss. “Oh, fuck off!”

 

“It was too easy,” Brian protested.

 

“Let’s get going, we’re going to be late.”

 

***

 

“Felix was incredible, wasn’t he?” Roger asked, kicking a pinecone down the path. They had been told that the weather was unseasonably warm here across the pond as well, but Central Park was still lightly occupied on this Thursday afternoon. They had this section nearly to themselves.

 

“He did everyone proud. I thought his talk was very good…clear even to us non-microbiologists.” Brian was still mulling over some of the points Felix had brought up. He had no idea that viruses could be so interesting, he must remember to ask the newly minted doctor for some book recommendations on the topic.

 

“Well, speak for yourself. I zoned out halfway through the background slides.” A celebration dinner was planned for later, but Felix’s labmates and grad school friends had wanted to take him out for happy hour after the defense. Roger and Brian had urged Rory to go along and then excused themselves from the young people’s fun. “But I liked the way he all but called that old guy an idiot when he asked that long-winded question.”

 

They fell into an easy rhythm of a couple used to walking together. Roger hummed softly under his breath and Brian glancing around with curiosity at the mix of familiar and strange flora and fauna. Brian remembered how excited he had been when they first came here. A tour of America, that always meant you had made it. And then the disappointment and fear when he had to go home, certain that he had thrown away his life on nothing.

 

“Do you remember the first time we were here? In New York?”

 

“Of course,” Roger said with a quick glance up at him. “I would have never have thought then I would be back forty years later watching my son defend his thesis on HIV biology. Huh, we didn’t even know what HIV _was_.”

 

They both were quiet a moment. The day spent around researchers casually talking about the disease that had decimated their lives had more or less desensitized Brian to the word. But he still felt a nagging sickness in his stomach about how close Freddie had been. Roger may have zoned out, but Felix’s background slides on combination therapies had driven home to him how sharp the divide in treatment was between ’91 and ’92. _If only there had been one less bout of pneumonia, if only he had been a little stronger…_ He renewed his grip on Roger’s hand. _Stop this, what happened, happened and you can’t change that now._  

 

“I would have never have thought then that this is how things would have turned out…” Roger stumbled in to silence, took a breath and went on. “if I had told you how I felt when we were first here…before you got sick…when you got sick…”

 

Brian frowned. While he had been occupied with might have beens, Roger’s mind had also be going down a different twisting path. “Roger, we’ve been through this. Who knows what it would have changed? Everything…nothing, it doesn’t matter. This is the way things went.”

 

“You’re right. I can’t imagine my life ending up in a better place than this…except, fuck! It all depended on the worst thing in our lives happening! Losing Freddie! How can we be happy about all of this,” He spun around, the sweep of his hands taking in the entire massive city. “When it’s all because Freddie died?”

 

“I don’t see things that way.”

 

Roger blinked in surprise. “How?”

 

“I felt the same way once…it tears you up, to be guilty about happiness. But then I realized what Freddie was trying to tell me as he died, that a good thing that comes out of a bad one is not tainted. He gave us this gift, we shouldn’t cherish it less because it was the last thing he could give. That only makes it more precious.”

 

Roger bit his lip. “Of course I _know_ all that. It’s just—it’s hard to stop from feeling…”

 

Brian took his hand and pulled him closer. He was less surprised by the shift in mood than an outsider might be because it was all so familiar. This was why they had started the yearly gathering at Mary’s, to distract themselves from the hard questions with company and Scrabble. They still always bubbled through, though. Even the joy of Felix’s defense couldn’t stop it and Brian blinked as he started to feel tears welling up in his eyes.

 

Brian saw a flash of yellow just off the path, nestled in the roots of tall oak tree. “Look, Roger. Daffodils,” he said in hushed tones.

 

Roger took a few steps closer and then stopped in his tracks, staring at the flowers. “But it’s November…”

 

A shiver ran through Brian’s body and he stepped up behind the drummer and wrapped his arms around him. Gazing at the bright, flamboyant flowers in the midst of the late autumn’s drab browns and greys, he felt suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of Freddie’s presence. Roger twisted in his arms to look over his shoulder down the path as if he felt it too. He felt like he did every time he sang “Love of My Life” in concert with Freddie’s words reverberating in his chest, like the other man was right there next to him still. _I am sorry for all the things that went wrong, dearest Freddie_ , he thought at the presence. _But I am_ so _glad for all the things that went right. Love of my life_. As he thought it, he pulled Roger closer and buried his face in his corn silk hair, shorter and greying now, but still as soft and warm as a puppy’s fur, and he inhaled his clean scent.

 

Roger turned and put his arms around Brian’s neck. “I am sure that there is a logical explanation. But isn’t it also okay to accept a non-logical one?”

 

“Of course,” Brian said with a smile. He kissed Roger lightly and then pulled back to look at him. “Maybe they’re a wedding gift.” And he slipped the simple gold band that had been burning a hole in his pocket for the whole trip into Roger’s pocket. Roger’s hand went immediately to his side and a grin spread across his face.

 

“I’m too old to get married again,” he protested.

 

“Well, if it is any consolation, it’ll be my first. Although I doubt that I can wear white.”

 

Roger laughed and his laugh was infectious enough that Brian couldn’t help but chuckle along. He had a strange sensation that whatever the spirit of Freddie that he felt from time to time was, it was laughing too. “If you’ll wear a dress…in a color of your choosing, then I think we have a deal!”


End file.
